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In this interview Lisa interviews top Holistic movement and health coach David Liow of www.hm-coach.com.   Lisa and David do a deep dive into why our circadian rhythms are out of whack, what blue light blocking glasses can do for your health and sleep dysfunctions. They also look into health optimisation and foundational health principles.   David Liow completed a post-graduate MPhEd (dist) at Otago University and became a Occupational Therapy lecturer in rehabilitation, anatomy, and kinesiology, then a senior lecturer in Exercise Rehabilitation and Resistance Training.   While teaching in higher education, he kept following his passion in sports training and spent a decade working with High Performance Sport New Zealand as a lead strength and conditioning coach. This gave him the opportunity to work with a wide range of world class athletes.   Some career highlights so far are: Head trainer for the New Zealand Black Sox for two successful World Series campaigns Head trainer for the New Zealand Black Sox for two successful World Series campaigns Head trainer and regional trainer for NZ Women's and Men's Hockey for several Commonwealth and Olympic Games. Head trainer for the NZ Titleist Men and Women's Golf Academy for several Espirito Santo and Eisenhower Trophy Championship teams. Trainer for numerous Commonwealth and Olympic athletes in athletics, basketball, through to swimming. Regularly speaking at FitEx NZ, Filex, Asia Fitness Conference, ExPRO, Asia Edufit Summit, and other international health and fitness events. Health coaching pop bands on international concert tours around the globe. Co-directing Kaizen Exercise Physiologists to develop a world-class team of exercise physiologists Co-founder of the Kaizen Institute of Health David says the Holistic Movement Coach Programme is the perfect vehicle for him  to live his mission and share his life's work.   He is obsessed with finding the best ways to be healthier and move better.  To balance out his obsession(s) he is also a tai chi and chi kung practitioner and teacher, and practices the lifestyle that he teaches   Findo out more about David and his work and courses at www.hm-coach.com   To get a discount on the blue light blocking glasses mentioned in this podcast use the coupon code Lisa at checkout at  https://hm-coach.com/index.php/store/   Grab your blue blocking glasses here in our shop https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/clothing-and-accessories/products/blue-light-blocking-glasses-v2-0-free-postage   We would like to thank our sponsors for this show:   For more information on Lisa Tamati's programs, books and documentaries please visit www.lisatamati.com   For Lisa's online run training coaching go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/running/ Join hundreds of athletes from all over the world and all levels smashing their running goals while staying healthy in mind and body.   Lisa's Epigenetics Testing Program https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics/ measurement and lifestyle stress data, that can all be captured from the comfort of your own home   For Lisa's Mental Toughness online course visit: https://www.lisatamati.com/page/mindsetu-mindset-university/   Lisa's third book has just been released. It's titled "Relentless - How A Mother And Daughter Defied The Odds" Visit: https://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/ for more Information   ABOUT THE BOOK: When extreme endurance athlete, Lisa Tamati, was confronted with the hardest challenge of her life, she fought with everything she had. Her beloved mother, Isobel, had suffered a huge aneurysm and stroke and was left with massive brain damage; she was like a baby in a woman's body. The prognosis was dire. There was very little hope that she would ever have any quality of life again. But Lisa is a fighter and stubborn. She absolutely refused to accept the words of the medical fraternity and instead decided that she was going to get her mother back or die trying. This book tells of the horrors, despair, hope, love, and incredible experiences and insights of that journey. It shares the difficulties of going against a medical system that has major problems and limitations. Amongst the darkest times were moments of great laughter and joy. Relentless will not only take the reader on a journey from despair to hope and joy, but it also provides information on the treatments used, expert advice and key principles to overcoming obstacles and winning in all of life's challenges. It will inspire and guide anyone who wants to achieve their goals in life, overcome massive obstacles or limiting beliefs. It's for those who are facing terrible odds, for those who can't see light at the end of the tunnel. It's about courage, self-belief, and mental toughness. And it's also about vulnerability... it's real, raw, and genuine. This is not just a story about the love and dedication between a mother and a daughter. It is about beating the odds, never giving up hope, doing whatever it takes, and what it means to go 'all in'. Isobel's miraculous recovery is a true tale of what can be accomplished when love is the motivating factor and when being relentless is the only option.   Here's What NY Times Best Selling author and Nobel Prize Winner Author says of The Book: "There is nothing more powerful than overcoming physical illness when doctors don't have answers and the odds are stacked against you. This is a fiercely inspiring journey of a mother and daughter that never give up. It's a powerful example for all of us." —Dr. Bill Andrews, Nobel Prize Winner, author of Curing Aging and Telomere Lengthening.   "A hero is someone that refuses to let anything stand in her way, and Lisa Tamati is such an individual. Faced with the insurmountable challenge of bringing her ailing mother back to health, Lisa harnessed a deeper strength to overcome impossible odds. Her story is gritty, genuine and raw, but ultimately uplifting and endearing. If you want to harness the power of hope and conviction to overcome the obstacles in your life, Lisa's inspiring story will show you the path." —Dean Karnazes, New York Times best selling author and Extreme Endurance Athlete.   Transcript of the Podcast: Speaker 1: (00:01) Welcome to pushing the limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa Tamati brought to you by lisatamati.com Speaker 2: (00:14) Today I have a special treat for you guys. I have David Liow on the podcast from the sunshine coast, originally a Kiwi. Now David is a Legion and the fitness industry in New Zealand and Australia and Australasia. Uh, he has, uh, MPH ed from Otago university and was an occupational therapy lecturer in rehabilitation and anatomy and kinesiology. And then a senior lecturer in exercise rehabilitation and resistance training. He worked for a decade with high performance sport New Zealand and was the head trainer of the New Zealand black socks, was two successful world series campaigns. He's also worked with golfers and a number of Olympic athletes and athletics, basketball right through to swimming and he as a holistic movement coach. And today we're going to be diving into the topic of light and blue light blocking glasses. Um, something that David has developed his own range of blue locket, blue, blue light blocking glasses and why you should be interested in this. Speaker 2: (01:17) We get into sleep, uh, dysfunctional sleep. We get into, um, holistic movement and what that's all about. So a really, really interesting interview with David. Uh, before I go over to David, I just want to remind you my book relentless is now available in the bookstores right throughout the New Zealand. If you're listening from New Zealand, you can grab it at any bookstores around the country or of course if you're overseas or you want to grab it off my site, I'd love you to do that. You can go to relentlessbook.lisatamati.com To do that. Um, just reminder too, we also have a regular epigenetics webinars that we're holding. Our next one is on the swings day night, but if you're listening to this podcast later, go to epigenetics.lisatamati.com for the next webinar. Now this is all about our epigenetics health program, which is using the latest in genetic science to understand your genes and how to optimize them and what's, what's the best environment for those genes. Speaker 2: (02:16) So information about every area of your life from nutrition of course, and exercise, what to eat, when to eat, how often to eat, what types of exercise will suit your genes right through to your social, your mental, your intellectual talents that you may not be aware of, what the way that your brain works brought through to the neurotransmitters and the hormones that are dominant and how they will affect your personality. So it's a really amazing insight for health program that we're using both with corporates and individual athletes and people interested in optimizing their health. If you want to check that out, go over to the programs tab on our website at lisatamati.com right now over to the show with David Liow. Well hi everyone. Lisa Tamati to hear back at pushing the limits and I am with David Liow How are you doing Dave? Speaker 3: (03:08) I'm very well this morning. Thanks Lisa. You're over on the sunshine coast. I am, which is looking quite sunny this morning and we had a lot of rain last night, but the sunny coast is a sunny coast today. Speaker 2: (03:17) That was perfect. We've already, uh, um, Rick the morning for your whole family, trying to get on the same call and waking your daughter up and getting your laptop and stuff like that. So apologize to you, to your family, but you, we've got you on here, so I'm really, really privileged to have you on. Again, Dave, you're a return offender to my, uh, podcast. Um, you were on a couple of years ago I think goes so well, but so really excited to catch up with you. And today we're going to be talking a couple of different areas and we'll probably wander off path, but today everyone, it's about light and blue light blocking glasses that you may have heard about and why this is important and sleep. Um, Dave's an expert in this area and there's actually gone out and designed his own, uh, glasses for people. Um, so we're going to be getting into all of that good stuff. But Dave, tell us what you've been up to in the last couple of years and what you do over there on the sunshine coast. Speaker 3: (04:12) So in the sunshine coast, I have a exercise physiology clinic, which unfortunately isn't shut down at the moment. So we're on a, we're doing a lot of remote work, which is why communicated well, zoom has become a big commodity here at the moment in my household. So I also mentor a group of, uh, some of the best trainers in the world, many of which are based in New Zealand actually. So I worked with that group there and take them right through their education work. I do a lot of presenting to, so I'm often in Asia and New Zealand. I spend a lot of time in New Zealand. In fact, I was in New Zealand pretty much the whole of February. Just got back in time before things went the Casta key way. Of course, I am of course a Kiwi. Absolutely. So, but I've been, I've been over here for about 10 years now. Um, but certainly, um, I still do a lot of work in New Zealand in particular and a fair bit in Australia, funnily enough. Cause that's where I live. Speaker 2: (05:08) Yeah. And you have a hell of a reputation, uh, in the, in the personal training and the fitness training space. Um, you talk to anybody who's done anything, you know, above the sort of basic stuff and they know who you are. Um, so you've got a long, long history. You are a holistic movement coach. Can you explain what that is? Speaker 3: (05:27) Absolutely. So holistic movement coach, the idea is it's more than movement and that's pretty much what they're, what the logo says. So much more than movement because what I found is, I guess I've been doing this for over 25 years now and what I've, what I've always specialized in is the, the mechanics of the body. Yep. So I look at what's connected to what, look at how the tissues work, look at how joints work, look at how people move. And that was my world. But what I found after a while is that's not enough because we're more than just joints and leavers so much more. So if you don't look after the other part, that's where the holistic part comes in. If you don't look after the whole person after everything from their mindset through to the asleep, through the nutrition, there's just no way you can, you can get your results. So you can have the best training program in the world, the best corrective exercise program in the world. But if, if your minds are, you're stressed out of your brain or sleeping, I don't care what you give someone that's just not going to work. Speaker 2: (06:23) That's so funny that you come to the same conclusion and we, I mean a lot of people have late. I think as we do more research and starting to see also when you're training somebody or two people and you're getting completely different results and you're giving them the same program and the same goals and they're the same type of person and same age or whatever and you're like, why is that person getting results? And they're not. So really being that personal spaces in that holistic looking at, cause I truly believe like our mind is so like important for healing. You know, it's not just mechanical isn't, it? Isn't just when you've got a sore back. It isn't just necessarily about the back. Oh no way. Can you explain Speaker 3: (07:03) cliques and I know you've had some speakers talk about pain as well. Pain is extremely complex. That said output not an input. So certainly when you're talking about pain and injury, there's so much going on with the brain with there. Surely some mechanical parts that can have a role. But I mean the top two inches are just absolutely vital and you know with your background only. So you know that in terms of a high performance, but you can apply that to any field. You know, I guess one of the big differences there that I've come across is we're so focused on loading people. That's been our thing. How do we train people? How do we add more load onto people that's adding more stress on the people. So, and you know, I'll talk at a conference, there'll be, you know, there might be 50 talks on at the conference, 45 of them will be about loading, how to lot people with heel bells, how to load them with power bands, how to, how to Olympic lifting. Speaker 3: (07:55) Those things are great. Don't get me wrong. And I teach those and I do those. But where's the other part about getting people recovering? Well, getting them in the right place. So one of the key fundamentals and holistic movement coach is getting people in the right place so they can accept load. And then that's a really big point of difference. So if you can get people in the right space, then you apply your load, you can apply whatever load you want and they'll be fine. But until you're in that space, you're going to have nothing but breakdown. Speaker 2: (08:24) Yeah, and this is like, this is a real mind shift because like I know you've worked with a lot of elite level athletes and you know, in, in, in my stupid career, and I don't count myself as an elite athlete, I count myself as one of those stupid stubborn ones. But that I had that mentality just go hard or go home, you know, go harder, go harder, go harder. It was always the answer. If I wasn't getting results go harder. And it took me a long time to realize, especially as I got older, that approach was no working. And how do you reconcile that for people that are in the elite space set are just used to going full bore and then that suddenly not getting the results they used to get. Speaker 3: (09:06) Yeah, it's funny, I had a conversation with a group of athletes the other day and what I normally find is you are the classic woman, high performance athlete. You really are most of the guys, well I always find the individual athletes work harder than team athletes. Um, ones that work in funded sports and you know, great athletes here. And this is a massive generalization, sorry guys out there who are listening to this and going, hang on when work with you, I worked hard. But you find that the individual athletes work harder. Most of the men, you need to kick up the ass. You need to hold them back. So you, you're the classic one, but you live, you got smarter as you train. And I've read your journey and how you, how you run. You're constantly there to listen to, you know, when the, when the, when the student's ready, the teacher appears and, and you know, you certainly, um, you know, you figured out some, some pretty cool stuff and you know, that's the stuff that you apply in your program now. So yeah, Speaker 2: (10:14) you know that someone like Neo because I would argue and argue and argue with him, but eventually I came around cause what I was doing was right. Speaker 3: (10:22) Hello. He was right to have it Speaker 2: (10:27) fancy that I had to, Murray was right all along. But it is, it's a really hard shift and I think, you know, cause you get away with a lot when you're 20, well you knew 40 and you're still trying to be at the top of your game or your mid thirties even. You start to have a different things going on and things aren't recovering as well as they were. And even though you're doing the same thing, it's just not more of the same to every decade. I reckon you need a complete new approach. Speaker 3: (10:56) You need to do it smarter. And I've got a guy who, um, is in, he's, he goes to the world championship, um, uh, triathlon every year and he's been doing that for, I've been working with him for the last, since I arrived here, nine years now. And he got a three fastest times last year actually. The last one was blue, which is the last triathlon event before they closed down all the events here. So he's getting faster and faster and faster and know when he sees 50, 53 now. And we had a chat the other day and we were laughing about it and he's saying, you know, my three fastest times I've been in my last, you know, my last year, he said, yeah, we were actually starting to get the hang of it now. So look we can, we can flip the age card. Look there is a part to play I'm getting on as well, but we're looking at that experience you can bring to the table there. And I'm often training with young guys and I'm not going to, you're doing it right for an old guy. And I say, you got really well for young guy. He hasn't got nearly experienced I have, Speaker 2: (11:55) but don't ever compliment them so I can find out the hard way. But there is, it just has to be done smarter, so much smarter. And you know, we all look at ourselves as young athletes and go, Oh man, I had so much raw ability there. But then you look at how you're training now and go, boy, I'm so much smarter now. If you can take the, I'd much rather have a smarter than a roar athlete, get combined the two and you've got something really special and give it time. And I think like now we're starting to crack and this is an area of study that really interests me is longevity for obvious reasons. I'm getting older, my parents are getting old and I want to keep everyone alive and healthy. So that's the focus of my study in a lot of ways. Um, and we are working things out now to slow that aging process and reverse a lot of the danger, a lot of the problems that we've caused ourselves. Speaker 2: (12:47) So, um, I'm excited for some of the stuff I've been getting, you know, reading all sorts of stuff. I'm on peptides and all this sort of stuff and just wishing I could get access to some of the stuff and try it all out cause I'm a tree blew by a hacker, you know, try everything out on your own body, see how it works. Um, and there's some amazing stuff coming in. The information that's coming, uh, down the pipeline. If we can just stay healthy long enough, we, we've got a good chance at living really long, healthy lives. I think, you know, in the next 10 years there's going to be so much change happen that, you know, good things are gonna happen if we're onto it and we know we're aware of what's coming in the space. So I'm really excited for the, you know, being able to maintain performance for longer and have, you know, health and longevity, you know, beyond the hundred. Speaker 2: (13:35) I think that that's, you know, well and truly possible. So exciting. Um, and of course too, because health has that foundation. Yeah. We call it health and fitness. I mean it has to be healthy. Then fitness. You can't have one without the other. I know you had some real challenges in the query there and when that health goes, you can forget about the other part of it cause it's just not going to last year that's still undoing some of the damage I've done to my body. I've managed to save my kidneys and get them back on track, but then, you know, hormones came into the picture and um, you know, uh, troubles in the lady department and all that sort of jazz that's not on a fix and he has a lot to unravel. If I'd done it differently, um, back then. And of course, you know, doing extreme ultramarathons brings with it dangerous. It's not, you know, it's not, um, you know, a couple of hours running around the roads. It's doing really, really at the limit things and what is a coach now, I'm always like concerned. Sometimes I find myself like being that old mother be, it's like, Hey, no, don't push that hard. Go to those lengths because you know, sometimes it's not worth it for a competition. You know, um, one of the things that I often find myself saying to people as they, you know, they, they equate, Speaker 3: (14:52) uh, fitness with health. But boy, you know, sports not about health. It's about seeing how hard you can push yourself before you or your opponent breaks. So, you know, and that is the pointy end of performance. So you know, the way you've been pushing yourself, there's, there's, that's where you've, you've got to have everything covered and that's where a lot of that approach you said about your health and getting all those bits and pieces there. Because if you can get all those, those bases covered, you have got potential to push yourself through. Well, but a lot of people don't bring that health to that, that base health to the Speaker 2: (15:26) they face table. In other words, yeah. High performance sport or extreme endurance sport in my case is not healthy in of itself. Um, and I like, I truly believe like I was extremely fit in one way. I could run for hundreds of Ks, but I was sick. And if I look at myself in the way I looked and the way my body and my phenotype, my body was presenting, I did not look healthy. I look healthier. I look, funnily enough, more athletic now because I'm not holding all the fluid and my kidneys and working again. And my, you know, I was always four or five. I was quite puffy, you know, I was quite, um, I was always a muscular build, but I was puffy and unhealthy looking. And I always sort of was carrying white, you know, and wondering why when I'm doing millions of kilometers a year. And, um, and now I know why. Cause my body was just complete in hormonal hell and adrenal hell and, and, and so I was fit, but I was not healthy. And now for me, it's all about being healthy and longevity in having foundation or health. Speaker 3: (16:36) Yeah. And bringing that to you, you runners that you're working with in your groups. That's, that's, um, you know, that's gonna make, uh, uh, people enjoy what they do, so much more in it, achieve great things. So that's the way it should be done. So good on you for learning the lesson. Speaker 2: (16:51) Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And then being able to share the insights. And it's funny that we both come to the same sort of conclusions. Well it's probably logical. I suppose it's also a part of the age that we're at and having that maturity to be able to not just, it's not all just about much Muchow call I go go. It's about being strategic and you know, and I look at you, a lot of young athletes that are, you know, it's all about their abs and it's all about, you know, how sexy they look and that approach has also not healthy. Like it's not going to bring healthy just cause you're like ripped. Um, especially when it comes to woman. I think, you know, like we have this, you know, the ideal that isn't actually necessarily or always a healthy ideal. It's uh, it might look good for five minutes and your beginning ideal, but it's not exactly, we should be health wise and hormonally and all of that sort of stuff. We've gone completely off track cause today was me talking. But I love talking to people like you. So let's get back to blue light blocking glasses. Um, and why, why these are important, what they do and how, how does, um, having the wrong light at the wrong time affect your health? Speaker 3: (17:59) I guess we need to kind of talk about light to start with. And you know, if you think about the foundations of health, we think about the foundations of who we are as as humans we've always been exposed to light and dark. Those are two things that have never changed. We've had ever, and the way that we've operated, well, most and most cultures is that you are active in the day. That's the time you hunt together and at night that's the time you sleep. Because as cave men and cave woman, we were the fastest beings or strongest. So if you go hunting at night, unfortunately that say with two tigers got a better night vision than you have. So that's not a logical time for you to go and do your thing. So we've always been exposed to that as a way of regulating where our systems at and where we are. Speaker 3: (18:46) Every cell in your body has a circadian rhythm. So it's Acadia means about a day. So every cell in your body knows has a certain function at a certain time. And there's a neat little Wikipedia article on this, which basically says at different times where your reaction times best and you know this yourself, you get up, you have a certain routine that you'll go through. There are times you'll feel hungry, there are times you'll go to the toilet. There are times that your your most awake, most alert times that you want to go to sleep. So we have a whole rhythm built into our behaviors. In every single cell in our body has behaviors and actions that are governed by Diana light. So this is one of the foundation rulers of how our body works. Speaker 2: (19:29) Absolutely. So, so, okay, so what we've done in the last couple of hundred years, or I don't know how long we've actually had electric life, but ever since we've had electric glide, we've tipped everything up on its ear and we now have light at night time, whereas in the caveman days, and this is where our DNA hasn't evolved with the way that we've changed our lifestyle so quickly. Um, so we were exposed to, you know, televisions and lights and artificial lights and fluorescent light and horrible, lots of light, uh, at nighttime when our bodies are producing the hormones to go to sleep, your melatonin and things like this. Um, if, if we even go back, like I've just been reading a book by T S Wiley on hormone or health for woman and so on. And she talks about the fact that back in the old days when we were only governed by Moonlight, all woman's cycled at the same time. And I was like, wow. So we used to be all in sync with the moon and, and, and like how much light male camping trips that are out there. Months. We're outta here. But isn't that interesting that we, you said we used to be completely governed and this is, you know, back in the cave man days by those cycles of day and night and now are who is so, um, you know, bombarded with other types of light that are all about cycles, have now become individual. Speaker 3: (20:51) They're that light exposure. That's a better message. That's a, that's a great point because we used to have real light and real dark. So if I'm looking outside now, it's a pretty sunny day here. Um, so lights measured and what the units called a lax. And ALEKS is the amount of light put out by a candle when it's one meter away from you. So that's one Luxe. So, um, if you're looking at Moonlight, we'll go with Moonlight. Moonlight is around maybe 0.5 to one Luxe. So it's a very light amount of light. Well, it's a very small amount of night. So if I'm looking at a room, let's say you're, um, soft lighting in a, in a bedroom that's 50 Lux. If you were sitting in your room, you're in your dark room. That's not a dark room. That's 50 lacks. And what's happening now is with all the artificial light. Speaker 3: (21:38) And um, for me, I live in the suburbs so my neighbors have their light on it. It puts a, you know, I can, if I walk outside I'll see that. So we're not exposed to real dark. Our darks not dark, right. If we flip it the other way too, our light's not light. So I'm looking outside at the moment. I've probably got 50,000 Lux of natural sunlight out there. If I'm sitting in an office though, I've probably got 300 Lux. So when I'm in day sitting in my light, I'm not sitting in real life. And when I'm at night, I'm not sitting in real dark. So now we have 50 shades of gray thing going on at that movie. We've got that all the time. So we're not seeing real dark and real life. Some of the people that probably, well hopefully watching, listening to our interview today, um, they may get up in the morning, it might be dark where they are too. Speaker 3: (22:29) They might flick on a light bulb, they'll hop in their car, they'll go to their office underground, they'll go to their office where they'll sit in their cubicle all day with their first flight. They can't get out for lunch, cause are busy. They'll come home by then it might be getting a bit dark too. They'll go and they'll sit in front of their TV. So I get no exposure to real dark or real life. And boy that is a foundation for how our body operates. You get that wrong, you miss that up. Um, you can get a whole range of interesting symptoms. Every system, every cell in your body is affected by that. So we're at see where it goes. Nobody knows, but it's not going to be good. Speaker 2: (23:06) No. And this is, it fixed. So many systems like we have, you know, a hormonal system as a, as I mentioned before, we've got out melatonin production and now our eyes. Um, and, and also the fact that like, that's getting to the, you know, uh, the subject of, of why sunlight's important and we've all been told like, you know, don't put sunscreen on and make sure you're covered up when you go out in the sun and so on. And that is actually, we're not giving enough vitamin D. I mean, everyone knows that we produce vitamin D when we go in to the sunshine, but I don't think people know how important vitamin D and all of the processes is actually a prohormone. They're calling now, not a vitamin because it's so many parts of the body and so many organs. Everything from your, your mood, which we do understand that, you know, that produces it seasonal, um, disorder. Speaker 2: (23:56) Um, but it also like is, is a, is the building block one of the building blocks of your hormones, of your, your, uh, your mood in, you know, all of these things are being affected. Even your bone health, you know, like vitamin D is one of those crucial things. Um, and we can supplement with vitamin D. And I think for a lot of people that's a great thing to be doing if you can't get the normal amount of sunlight. Um, and I was reading, but yeah, we need to actually go outside and get sun on our eyes and sun on our skin. What actually happens when we go out and we get that sunlight, cause I used to wear a, I still do most of the time because I've got very sensitive eyes to light. So I've been wearing my sunglasses forever and a day outside. Why is it important that I take my sunglasses? Speaker 3: (24:44) So what are doing Mary can mean particularly for people who have sleep problems is they get some real sunlight in your eyes, particularly in that first half of the day. So their morning sun. So that's the most important time. So when that light comes through, so lights made it a whole lot of different colors. So all the colors of the rainbow, the Roy Bev thing, but typically a daylight or or, or a real real life. It's very high in blue light. When that comes through, it goes through your eyes and there's some photo of, there's some fairly sensitive ganglion cells. So there's some specific cells in your eyes which are right in your written to the there which, which sends signals to your master clock in your brain, which then sends signals out to the rest of your body letting you know what time it is. Speaker 3: (25:31) So that morning sun. So sunglasses, I've got no problems with sunglasses. If you're out in the sun all day, but getting up, you know, being in sunglasses all day, that's going to do you a disservice. So ideally you want some, some real light in your eyes. Take the 15 minutes is great, you know, thirties fifteens, but even five minutes better than nothing, right? So if you are struggling with sleep, even if you can eat your breakfast outside or get a little bit of a walking from your car to the office or around the block, getting some real sunlight that will help your brain distinguish, okay, this is daytime. Then if you can get some real dark, okay, then your brain can start thinking, okay, now I understand what time of day it is so I can start getting my cycles right. Speaker 2: (26:14) Wow, that's, that's powerful stuff. And then, and then so many knock on effects for our health and we'll do that and when we do it wrong. And you know what, um, I'm working with a few different people that are unfortunately in hospital at the moment with, you know, various problems, um, delights in the hospital. Like we were sticking our sickest, most vulnerable people under these horrific lights that are going all night. I mean, of course the nurses need to move around and see. So it's a bit of a, I don't know how to fix the problem. Yeah, jeez. Yeah, Speaker 3: (26:44) so there's the fluoro. So flouro and led lights are particularly high in blue light too. So when you're in those hospitals, um, Chang airport says another place if you wish. I'm obviously not at here at the moment, but I go and the amount of light in their places, often they're at 3:00 AM in the morning in between places. Those lights. Singles are incredibly strong and that's effectively that blue light coming from those lights here is telling your brain that it's, it's middle of the day. So I always thinking about the nurses that work in those places too. That's a know that's a real health hazard for them. So unfortunately we've got all these lights in our houses now too. So led lights are very energy efficient but also extremely, extremely powerful. So you've got a whole of intensity but also very, very high in blue light. Speaker 3: (27:34) The old school filament, like light bulbs are very low and blue lights. So the old school lights though, they do more energy. We're actually far better for your health, for your health. Wow. That's no good. No, not unfortunately not. And that's where you, you candle lights really great too. And you know, when we were thinking back to our roots, and this is, you know, if we look in the past to find out how we need to kind of operate for our health today, um, you know, fire is also very low and blue light. So sitting around a fire is actually very common. It doesn't wake you up unless you're sitting too close to the fire. That's out candle lights. Speaker 3: (28:16) Um, just on that, you know, um, a change of temperature, but before you go to bed is also another good sleep. You know, this is why when you, when you increase the warmth or what, um, or even cold would actually, well, as long as you change the temperature that you've been in, that signals to your body is a change coming at something you go to sleep. So that's another little trick and you know why? Probably sitting around the fire that doesn't have blue light and that will help you go, go and not off afterwards. That idea of sleep routines is just fantastic and yeah, you know, and you know, having a good receipt routines, fantastic. And we do this with our kids where we're grading it, you know? Yeah. Okay, we're going to get ready to go to bed now. Okay, we'll brush your teeth. Speaker 3: (28:55) Now we're going to do a story here. Okay. We're going to put on your bedside lamp. We'll turn the light down and we'll go to sleep. But when we're adults, we kind of forget about that. And you go, Oh, okay, I'll watch till the end of this program here. And it might be one big, one time you'll go to bed, might be 9:00 PM. Next one, it's 1130. It's all over the show. We don't do that with our kids. And we forget about those routines. And part of that is, is light light's a big part of that. That's the most important part of your sleep routine is getting your light source right. That's exactly right. And this is why. So you learned this and then you said, right, I'm going to go and buy some blue light blocking glasses. Yeah, I did that too. And um, you know, you go on the internet, you Google up somewhere on Etsy or eBay or somewhere and you buy something. Speaker 2: (29:41) And what did you find with those glasses? Speaker 3: (29:44) Yeah. Um, so achieve one of your, I know we um, a previous speaker you head on was talking about sleep apnea and positional sleep apnea. So look, I've always thought I slept pretty well, but when I started working on my sleep apnea and my breathing boy, I went to another level and I got quite excited about it and once I fell out of a blue light and the effects that have, I thought, man, I've got to get that right. So exotic executive, same as you. I went out and I bought about 20 pairs of glasses from, from all sorts of people. And when I did my research there, I found out, okay, I need to find out about transmission spectrum or in other words, what colors or what, what frequencies of light were blocking, uh, with those glasses. So every pair of glasses that I bought, I emailed the manufacturer and said, tell me about your glasses. Speaker 3: (30:36) What transmission spectrum are they are and what have they been tested? Most of them never even got back to me. And the ones that did had no idea what you're doing. I started thinking, well come on, this can't be right. And it didn't seem to matter what price I paid for those glasses either. Even some of the so called blue light glasses websites. They had no idea or no data supporting what they're actually doing. So what you were getting was all over the show. Sometimes I'd actually find, I'd get the same pair of glasses from, from two different manufacturers and they were the same pair of glasses, but they were totally different. I had totally different stats on them. All the lenses were different colors and they said they were the same. Speaker 3: (31:17) Absolutely. Here's an example of when I got here and I'll just put that this is what a typical, yeah, blue light glass looks like. It's got a slight orange tinge to it and that blocks certain colors. So particularly the blue is the color we want to block. And what that does is that takes away the signal to our brain that it's, it's, it's daylight. So the idea with blue light blocking glasses is to tell your brain you with them at night to tell your brain that it's not daytime. So that was a so called blue light blocking. These are cheap here. I think that was maybe, maybe 40 bucks or something off some internet site and that's mine. And if we have difference in color block the same amount of light. Wow. I completely different. No they don't because I actually ended up getting an optometry lab, um, to produce mine cause I got so disappointed with the quality of, of glasses and I said there's no way I'm going to wear these myself and if I shouldn't wear them, why the hell would I ask other people to wear them? We Speaker 2: (32:18) had as a lay person, you read the advertising material and you, you know that the science is correct. Like the, the, you know what we've been saying about and it makes sense to you and then you go and buy some and then you're disappointed because it's not doing well. You don't notice. You just think I'm doing it right. And I, and I've got it right and I haven't. So now you've got these available. So, um, I will be putting, uh, the links of course to, to your glasses and uh, in the show notes. Um, but just let us know where we came. Can we grab your glasses from? Speaker 3: (32:49) Yep. So holistic movement coaches though my company, so it's H M with a-coach.com and they are available in the store there and I'm sure if we ask Lisa nicely, she might put a coupon code in for you. Speaker 2: (33:04) We're going to do that and I'll put that in the show notes or I'd actually like to list them up on our site and drop, you know like yeah. So that people have them available. So yeah, either go to Dave's website or my website and you'll be able to grab those ones. We'll, we'll sort that out afterwards. Um, so Speaker 3: (33:21) Lisa, you were talking about melatonin before then. That's one of the things that got me really excited when I started looking at the glasses and there was one study there that kind of, I looked at it and went, wow, that's amazing. And they had two groups of people. One had a clear lens and the other one had a blue light blocking glasses lens and that it was good quality lens. It was pretty much the same as mine. Yup. And they showed the melatonin levels creeping up during the night and that's what should happen. So melatonin is, is it's basically a hormonal signal for dark. It's your body's way of saying it's dark and those levels creep up as soon as it starts getting dark and they were going the same, um, until what happened is the blue light blocking glasses guys had a much higher level of melatonin than the ones that were wearing the clear lenses. Speaker 3: (34:10) So since I were in a, they were in a, a room, which was about 150, lax, which is a, uh, and average lounge. Yep. Um, the blue light blocking glass folks had a much higher melatonin level so that we're getting the appropriate signal. But what was interesting though was after they went to sleep in the morning, the folks at block blue light had less melatonin first thing in the morning. Absolutely. Because the last thing, when you're awake, you don't want melatonin running around your body. So they wake up drowsy. So typically people who don't block blue light will struggle to get to sleep because they're not getting their chemical message from melatonin that it's dark. But then in the morning they get stuck with that excess melatonin and find it hard to get going. There are a few, one of those folks that struggle to get to sleep and also struggle to get going in the morning. That exposure to light could be a really big factor Speaker 2: (35:03) and this and the melatonin and the cortisol are related and I'm not an expert on this, but I, I started taking, cause I was having trouble sleeping melatonin tablets, you know, um, supplements and I was, you know, it was good. I was sleeping much better. Um, then I did a blood test and I'm not quite sure, you know, but my, my doctor rang me up in a bit of a panic going, you know, your melatonin levels are 10,000 times too high. Um, uh, and um, your, your blood, I think you've serum levels or whatever. It's not, you know, actually 10,000, but it was, it was a lot higher and I had no cortisol like when they, cause they did the cortisol tests and I don't know whether it was related to the melatonin or not, but since stopping the melatonin and implementing some other things to be fair, um, my cortisol levels are now back at the top end of normal range. So they're toppings. But um, so it's a bit of a uh, uh, so you're just taking a supplement of melatonin, um, can be a good thing, but you have to be a little bit careful with that as well. Speaker 3: (36:09) Melatonin's is a strange one and I used to recommend people to take melatonin once upon a time, but you know, melatonin is the only hormone that you can buy across the counter or even online and get it shipped to you. I mean, imagine doing that with testosterone or, or any other hormones you've got in your body. It's, it's, it's a strange one and it's very unregulated. So when you get a melatonin, if you're taking a pill or a capsule or drop, the dose you get is often very different from the dose that you experienced in your body too. So it's very unregulated. So you pay a little bit tricky with the brains you're using. Now what you found nearly so in your perfect example of that is your levels went sky high because often what happens is melatonin builds up and production peaks around the middle of your sleep cycle. If you were went to bed at 10 and woke up at six, halfway through that would be about 2:00 AM. So that's when your melatonin levels are really cranking. But when you take a melatonin before you go to sleep, you're going to get that peak very, very early as well. So now you're going to get a hormonal message, which is in the wrong time of that cycle too. So they can still sit up some, some little issues there. And if you're getting crazy high levels of that, that can cause you some issues. Speaker 2: (37:22) And this was only one tablet, a little wee tiny tablet. So it wasn't, you know, like overdosing or anything. And then the cortisol, which is your stress hormone, but it's one we want in the morning, absolutely was in that gutter. So I was like waking up like, Oh my God, do I have to get out of bed because I don't want, you know, there's just no get up and go. And it was just sheer grit to get up Speaker 3: (37:41) flooded with melatonin. That time there and you know, you did right cortisol as you'd get up and go in the morning. So melatonin should plumb it in the morning because it's no longer dark. It's time to get up cortisol levels. It should be the highest there to get you out of bed. So you start playing around with that system. Um, bye. Introducing foreign substances in. Yeah. You Speaker 2: (38:02) know, you can get some varied results, which you may not be wanting to do it under controlled if you're going to do it, you know, Drake that you're measuring it too though, you know, at least you know what's working for you and what's not working for you. Yeah. And, I mean, unfortunately we can't go and get a cortisol test every week or a blood test every week. So it's always a time and point. Um, but you know, and when you, because I've, you know, struggled for a long time with adrenal insufficiency, surprise, surprise, and, you know, a lot of people have high cortisol, whereas I was like, no cortisol, like not producing any hormones of any sort for everything in the gathering, wondering why, why, when I'm training my ass off, things aren't working, you know. Um, and, and starting to, you know, over the last couple of years, starting to unravel that mess and get it back. Speaker 2: (38:54) And it's not a, it's not easy and it's, it's, it's hard in course when you're going through the change changes in life anyway, and you've got all that going on. But we, um, you know, we can optimize this if we, if we, if we learn enough, if we get the right doctors, if we get the right support and this and getting our hormones right so that we stay in the best optimal ranges I think is, um, but you do need to do that under the auspices of a good, hopefully a functional doctor if you don't want to be playing around with these things Willy nilly, you know, even melatonin, even though you can buy it over the counter, can have adverse effects. Um, as a culture we're always looking for that quick fix or that pill always. I think melatonin is like step 42 and ways of getting better sleep. Speaker 2: (39:44) A good way of putting it is it is one of the tools and the cats, it needs to be done in a regulated fashion and it needs to be done a little bit carefully. And the other things are lower hanging fruit. The natural way is a better way. If we can go what it looks like looking glasses and angel. Certainly, you know, if you can sleep in a dark room, I love that temperature. The idea of temperature you had before. Get the temperature right in your room. If you can dim your lights as well and try and keep away from bright lights at night, that's got to help. And look, something's better than nothing. But you know, certainly if you are really struggling with your sleep and you want to get that back on track, working with light and dark is number the number one thing I work with with sleep disturbances. Speaker 2: (40:25) That's the first thing I'll look at. Yeah, absolutely. And then, I mean we had that lovely interview last week with James Morris on the show. Um, it might be a couple of weeks back by the time people hear this. And that's a really important one to to go and, and understand. Cause you know, like someone like you, you said you have positional sleep apnea. Um, you know, you are extremely fit and extremely, you know, uh, into health. And most people are quite amnio with people who are overweight. To people who drink too much, people who you know have diabetes perhaps or, or those sorts of co-morbidities. Um, how did you discover it? If you don't mind sharing and what, do you have to be on a C pap machine? Or are you just doing the mild sleep apnea, which a lot of us will have by the way? Absolutely. So I've always been a snorer. My father's a snore and my brother's a snorer. Yeah. So, and it comes down to airway. So when you sleep, part of sleeping is, is relaxation. And that's where the repair happens. That's why we spend a third of a bedroom, a third of our life there. But, um, when you're, when you're relaxing, part of the issue too is that your, the muscles around Speaker 3: (41:34) your, um, your jaw relax as well. So if you're lying on your back, and particularly what that means is the tongue can come back and it can block the airway. The railway is only about as thick as a straw. It's a, it's a very small thing. So, particularly if you have a jaw that doesn't sit very far, if you don't have a big, unfortunately like my jaw comes back and shuts off my airway and I'm the victim. It's like someone's smothering me in the night so that that causes snoring, but also, um, it can totally block my away and wake me up. So, um, yeah. So I ended up measuring a lot of sleep and I looked into measuring sleep. I did that for looking at every device under the sun. And um, I tend to use this one here called a night shift. Okay. Speaker 3: (42:19) See on the picture there, you can actually put it around your neck. That's the idea. And that's a medical grade. Um, sleep, sleep measuring device without people going into a sleep lab, it's the best, um, the best device you use. And so here we go. You just pop it off you go. And basically what I ended up doing is measuring my own sleep, then hundreds of people after that. Then teaching lots of people how to do that and how to analyze that and figure out what's going on with people's sleep. We can we get those, you know, it's a medical one, so not easy to get by because not everybody wants a full blown stuff. Speaker 3: (43:01) So what we actually do with my guys and holistic movement coaches that I train, they're actually trained to actually, we actually hire them out. We get people to actually click the data, they send them back to us, and then we actually take them through what the data means. So, wow. Yeah. You've got your watches that you can wear, which you know, which can give you some sleep sleep. That's called actigraphy. And the idea is you put your watch on your wrist. When you move your wrist, it means you're awake. When you're, you're not moving, you're asleep. That's probably a little bit too simplistic. That's kind of looking at, you know, looking at the Speedo and your car saying, okay, that's how my car is running. There's a lot more going on on the surface. Just that one reading. So, yeah. What a, what a, what a sleep study does. Speaker 3: (43:45) And what they do in a sleep lab is I'll put, um, that leads onto your head looking at your brain activity. They'll look at your breathing, they'll look at your heart rate, they'll look at movement. So the movement, the actigraphy, Pat's only one small part of it. So what a, what a night shift does is it actually attaches around your neck because if you're moving your, your neck device on the back of your neck, you're awake. So it's much more accurate for a staff, but it also measures snoring as well. So snoring, volume and also any position you're in. So what I found is when I'm lying on my back, well that's the time we, my airway is mostly when I'm laying on my side, it's not so bad. So, um, and there's also a sitting on there where you can actually get it to buzz you when you're on your back so you can use it to retrain sleep on your side, which is what I did. Speaker 2: (44:33) Wow. Okay. So, uh, I'll be really interested. Maybe we can talk afterwards where we are, uh, get work. Cause like, um, I've got Jesus as a friend and so on. Um, but convincing your father or your husband to go and have a full on sleep study is one thing and they won't. Speaker 3: (44:52) That's what we found as well. So if I'm going to measure something, if I'm going to do something, I want to do it the best I can and certainly, and look, the aura ring is also pretty good at getting orders on your hands. So you move your hand around, kind of give you some misleading data there. The night shift is the most accurate way I've found of measuring sleep in the home. That's great because if you want to change sleep, I mean measure it so you can measure it to manage it. There's also some questionnaires which I'd really recommend and we get our guys to fill those in as well because we want to kind of find out how they're feeling as well and also getting an idea of their sleep habits, but there's no lying. The amount of data that comes out of that is incredible. I've had some people really change their sleep habits around once they see what's going on. Speaker 2: (45:38) Oh gosh. Yeah. When you put them under the data, cause everyone's like, ah, I'm okay. But I was like, you know, and I probably shouldn't say as well as, you know, listen to my husband sleep the other day and he like, he stopped breathing for like three minutes. I got the, I actually got the thing out and I timed and I was like, Holy crap, he's not, you know, and then he would go back onto his side and then he would, you know, do that. And I'm like, yeah. Speaker 3: (46:01) Oh, Speaker 2: (46:02) and he's not overweight and he's fit and the next, you know, like he's, he's like, okay, how can I have a problem, you know? Um, so I'll talk to you after this thing, but can people virtually contact you in, in, in, um, do that or is it has to be an in person thing? Speaker 3: (46:17) No, we do that remotely. So the idea is, you know, you don't have to come and sit in the lab and get hooked up with a hundred leads around your hand. We send it out, you wear it. We get a couple of nights data to make sure we've got a reasonable, we want a reasonable, um, if there's such thing as an average night's sleep, you have some questionnaires as well. You send that back to us, we get all the data off it and then we remotely, we take you through and go, okay, here's what's happening with your sleep here and here's some of the patterns you've got. And just like you'd have a training program for your running. We have one for sleep as well, so you can get your sleep more on track. I'm doing that, I'm getting that for the family, Speaker 2: (46:54) you know, like, um, the reason I had sleep apnea and GS on last week was because it saved my mom's life. It's that important. You know, when you have a stroke, especially, you need to get a proper full Braun, you know, sleep tests done. If you've had a brain injury. It's, this is something that's really, really under no, and it's just not knowing that this is a problem, uh, in the general medical world. Um, and I'm like, that's why like I do not believe my mum would be alive if I had not gotten a sleep apnea machine and got a C pet machine. That was the first step. Speaker 3: (47:27) I think there's a lot of really good that goes on in sleep and particularly around the brain. So you know, there's a lot of prices where they, where you're there, the little cells are going around cleaning up all the debris, they're cleaning out the brain also cleaning out the psyche as well. So if you can optimize sleep there, boy, it make such a big impact on, on people's health and particularly if they've had, um, central nervous system damage. Yes. In fact, that was one of the, when I first put these glasses out, I actually gave a talk, um, to a group of physiotherapists and um, some of them were working civically with concussion and they looked at the stuff and they went, Holy cow, can we try all these? And, and with our patients, I said, yeah, of course you can. And data's got back to me, said, wow, the different sets making is incredible because you know, think about when you get central nervous system damage, it's hard to filter in with all that information that's coming at you. And if you're getting abnormal light signals all the time, particularly at night, um, that's another stress your body has to play with. So often they were getting some great results with people sleeping better, feeling a lot better. Is that key with concussion types, um, and heat injuries, uh, by using blue light blocking glasses. Speaker 2: (48:40) Yeah. And this is why we're having this conversation because this is going to go in my new course on brain optimization and longevity because this is a big piece of the puzzle for people who have suffered, whether it's strokes or concussions or, uh, you know, even for people who have vascular problems like dementia or Alzheimer's I think is all foundational health things that we need to be addressing. And those people especially, Speaker 3: (49:02) and sleep is the, you know, there's, there's, there's is the foundation of our healing, our self healing. So you get that right. You know that that's, that's money for jam and I'm looking for these fancy things and he's got an inbuilt system. We've got all these inbuilt systems, we just need to use them and tap into them. So what you've got, you've got those sleep cycles, which I'm sure has been covered elsewhere, but you've got your non-REM and your rim sleep. So your REM sleep is when you notice that your eyes were moving a lot. But that's the one where you get your dreams a lot more. So what happens, you get cycles of non-REM and REM sleep throughout your night when when you first go to bed, your non-REM cycles are longer than your rim cycles. But as those no cycles repeat over and over again, as you keep into your sleep, by the time you're getting closer to the morning, you will rim, sleep, other bigger parts of the cycle. Now the non-REM sleep is really important for physical repair. So if you've got, if you've got some, if you've got clients who are ill or have physical illness that's really important, they get to bed early and make the most of those, those in REM cycles. So they need those bigger long cycles at the start because if you go to bed really late, you're going to miss some of those longer, uh, in rim sleep cycles. Speaker 2: (50:19) I knew that, but I didn't know why. Like I knew that that was when the physical healing, psychological healing sort of stuff as later on, but I didn't. Speaker 3: (50:28) Yeah, that's, that's it. Right? So you've also, if you, if few have got a lot of emotional stress going on and you may have both as well, that's where it's really important to make sure you're not getting up at 4:00 AM in the morning cause you're missing that. You're missing that, that, that, that REM sleep, which helps clean out all those emotions there, the stress you've got going on. Um, and also consolidate a lot of learning processes as well. So both of those cycles are really important. And respecting where you are and which ones you need is a big determinant on probably how you should be kind of using your sleep as well. Speaker 2: (51:00) And that's like, um, so short term memory processing would be done in that phase two so that you're actually putting the stuff that you learned yesterday into the filing cabinet, so to speak. Yeah, Speaker 3: (51:10) that's right. Tidying it up in the library in a box away Speaker 2: (51:14) and the MIS, which is what happens and when we, when we go to sleep, we have this, um, what, what scientists have only recently discovered, from what I understand is that our brain actually shrinks in size and the cerebral spinal fluid comes in and does a brainwash, so to speak, and gets rid of the amyloid plaques. And so we have these beta amyloid plaques, which you may have heard from people who've have Alzheimer's. And one of the, the risk factors for people getting developing Alzheimer's over time, over a long period of time is a poor sleep because they're not washing out these, these speeder amyloid plaques Speaker 3: (51:51) disease and inflammatory process. Sleep will have an effect on every single one. Speaker 2: (51:57) [inaudible] I, I'm just doing the section in the brain optimization longevity course on uh, information and people do not get the concept. And I didn't for a long time either. And what the hiccup, I may have had this conversation with my mom yesterday cause I teach her all this stuff as I'm learning stuff and she's going, but I'm not inflamed and Speaker 3: (52:20) chronic disease. You have inflammation and I see Speaker 2: (52:22) you don't feel this type of information, man. This is on the inside. This is the endothelial linings of your vessels. This is from the brain injury, the mixing of the blood in the brain and causing inflammation. You don't feel that. It's not like, cause we all often think that our information, Oh that's when I've cut my hand and I've got that red thing around the cat. That's information. Now that is information too. But that's not the type of information we're talking about. And we're talking about systemic inflammation and there are so many aspects to lowering inflammation in their body. And sleep is a big piece of that puzzle. As with just heard and the right nutrition for your body, the right amount of exercise for your body at the right times. And all these things can help lower the inflammation levels and our systems and information is the cause of so many degenerative diseases, which are our biggest killers. Speaker 2: (53:17) You know, heart attacks or heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's cancers, even all of these have their root, one of their main things is in the inflammation process is going on the body. So if we can allow our inflammation, if we can look after our mitochondria, which has a little battery packs in the hour, each one of ourselves and help them produce more energy efficiently and not, you know, doing new, taking the DNA and things like that because of the inflammation, because of the free radicals and so on. Um, and you know, this is a topic for another 10 sessions, but that then we have foundational health and then we can do and be a lot more for a longer period of time. You know, and, and this is, it's all, it's also interconnected. So having the right sleep and wearing your blue blocking glasses and doing all these little bits and pieces will add up to longterm health. Speaker 2: (54:14) Do you agree? Brilliant. What a great summary of health. You went right from cellular health, right through to inflammation. That's a really great summary. If you've been doing your homework for this stuff, you know, and I just wish I had more brain power and I'm, you know, I'm well to optimize my brainpower to put more in, you know, so that you can understand more so that you can help more and the more you get into this world. And I mean, you know, that was just a very, um, you know, simplistic overview of, of things. Uh, and we have so complex and there's so many other things to learn, you know, immune systems and you know, God knows what, um, but it's all pieces of the puzzle. And I think when we have the attitude, I'm going to learn about my, and my health and what happens in my body because we spend ages, I don't get this, but we will spend ages planning our next holiday. Speaker 2: (55:07) What car are we going to buy and all the details of it. And we won't spend the time to actually look at what's going on in our, in our health and our body because we've outsourced that to the doctor. And I just think that that is the biggest disaster that we can do for ourselves. We can't outsource our health to any one person. We have to take ownership of our health and we have to be vigilant i

What can shift anxiety, depression, overwhelm, or simply feeling “down” - into feeling good, or even great? What are the hidden obstacles that get in the way? When it comes to improving your inner world, there are some things that consistently work. And there are other things that might help, but that aren’t nearly as effective. With more than 40 years of experience, Dr. David Burns, author of Feeling Good, returns to the show to reveal how his new “TEAM” approach helps you feel good - no matter what’s happening in your world. With examples from how he’s treated severe depression, anxiety, and PTSD - you’ll get a sense of how to eradicate your negative thoughts - and any resistance that's getting in the way. David Burns’s new book, Feeling Great, will be released this coming September. If you want to listen to our first episode together, where David Burns and I spoke about how to apply his work in relationships (based on his book Feeling Good Together), here is a link to Episode 98: How to Stop Being a Victim - Feeling Good Together - with David Burns If you want to listen to our second episode together, where David Burns and I spoke about how to recognize and deal with cognitive distortions, here is a link to Episode 133: Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life - Cognitive Distortions with David Burns And, as always, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on this episode and what revelations and questions it creates for you.  Join us in the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook to chat about it!  Sponsors: Find a quality therapist, online, to support you and work on the places where you’re stuck. For 10% off your first month, visit Betterhelp.com/ALIVE to fill out the quick questionnaire and get paired with a therapist who’s right for you. Resources:  Check out Dr. David Burns's website Read David’s classic books, Feeling Good or Ten Days To Self-Esteem Pre-Order David’s newest book: Feeling Great - The Revolutionary New Treatment for Depression and Anxiety FREE Relationship Communication Secrets Guide www.neilsattin.com/feelinggood3 Visit to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with David Burns Visit neilsattin.com/support or text "SUPPORT" to 33444 to support the podcast. Every little bit helps! Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out Transcript: David Burns: I had created - and we need to upgrade it a lot, an electronic version of my brief mood survey that patients can take at the start and end of every therapy session, plus rate the therapist: on empathy helpfulness, were there feelings that you were hiding, did you have trouble being honest? filling out the survey? And so we have before beginning and end of session, rating on relationship satisfaction, depression, anxiety, anger, happiness, suicidal urges - and although the tool needs to be improved a lot, they sent me the data from 9000 therapy sessions. David Burns: And so I've always loved statistical modeling and the kind of modeling, I do - Analysis of moment structures or structural equation modeling - requires big "Ns". And I've never had a database this big... It's kind of overwhelming like being a kid in a candy store. So I was able to... First off, just to replicate a lot of findings from 10-20 years ago, when I was working with smaller databases like maybe 500 patients from my clinic in Philadelphia, 100 and 70 patients from the Stanford in-patient unit which are relatively small. But I was able to replicate almost everything and the data is just the cleanest data set that I've ever seen and it's just full of correlational findings and potential causal findings as well. So I feel like we're seeing for the first time kind of like the anatomy of psychotherapy that's never been seen before. The veins, the arteries, the muscles, the tendons and how it works. So I can begin answering really, really basic questions, like, if you wanna have high patient satisfaction, what are the variables that cause that in the session, what do you need to attend to, or what goes into therapeutic empathy? I published an article that everyone has ignored actually in the top psychology journal about probably 20 years ago called intimacy and depression. Is there a causal connection? Because the interpersonal therapists, make a big deal about the idea that depression is caused by problems in intimate relationships. Maybe this should be our podcast. Maybe we could start broadcasting. And I never really bought it but it had never been tested. And it's hard to test because you have to do something called non-recursive modeling which is the most difficult topic in statistics where things are circularly correlated. Neil Sattin: Right, I think I heard in a recent podcast episode of yours. Testing - do thoughts cause feelings, or do the feelings cause thoughts? David Burns: Chicken or the egg... exactly, that was just a little study I did with my Standford Data it had about an n of 100 but the findings were clear cut, so I did something like that with a much larger database, maybe a few hundred where we had depression, and relationship satisfaction scores at the start of therapy. I didn't measure as intensely every session at the start and end. It was just once a session. But we had it at the intake and 12 weeks later. And intimacy and depression were correlated minus.4 at both time points, which was similar to what you see in the literature, using different scales everyone seems to come up with about that number. So high depression, low relationship satisfaction and high relationship satisfaction, low depression at both time points - and then changes in depression were associated with changes in relationship satisfaction. And so, people interpret this, like the cognitive therapists say. Oh, that's because when you're depressed, it causes an impairment in love relationships because a variety of reasons - you feel worthless, you feel un-lovable, and you're very sensitive to criticism, and you feel like I have a self that's no good. And then the interpersonal therapist says, "No, you know we need love, to feel happy" - But none of those people has ever bothered to check it out. People in our field in general, pretty much everything that's said is false, 'cause people just talk, they say things that they wanna believe and came up with it themselves, so they think it must be true. And so in my study, we found that there are NO causal links in either direction, that have any particular meaning. There are tiny little causal links that are marginally statistically significant, but the magnitude of the causal link is so tiny that you couldn't possibly improve depression by improving relationship satisfaction - even a great deal, and that itself, it's almost impossible. And in addition, you couldn't possibly improve a troubled marriage by improving the depression or even curing both partners of depression. I knew it already, because when my book 10 days to self-esteem came out. I did a bunch of studies all around - pilot studies. It's a self-help thing for depression, and I had about 40 pilot studies. This should be, in your podcast, I think. Neil Sattin: I'm recording right now. David Burns: Oh, you are recording - Okay that's great. And what we saw was that in all of these groups, people started with my book 10 days to self-esteem and they were in these groups - there were no therapists president. It was just a self-help thing I was trying to create. And all the groups, people had dramatic improvements in their depression but... but in none of the groups did relationship satisfaction improve. At the beginning they were depressed with miserable marriages, and then at the end of the group, they were euphoric with miserable marriages. It just proves that there's no connection between these domains. Well, I had a chance to try to confirm that now with 9000 therapy sessions where we've got relationship satisfaction or dissatisfaction is one variable, and depression or happiness. I measured happiness for the first time - as separate from depression. Happiness at the start and end of the session, depression at the start and end of the session. And the findings were exactly the same, and it was really thrilling. The correlation was similar, like -.3, which is a small correlation - 'cause the 3 times 3, is a 9, so there's only 9% overlap in depression and relationships, and relationship satisfaction or happiness and relationship satisfaction. I have to do that one. I could test that today. Does relationship satisfaction cause happiness or does happiness cause relationship satisfaction or both or either. After our call it'll take me a minute to answer that question. Neil Sattin: We can do a little footnote on this conversation with whatever you discover. David Burns: Right, but at any rate, it came out exactly the same - there are no meaningful causal relationships between them, and that's not a bad thing. Neil Sattin: Yeah, so what it leaves me wondering is, where are the major leverage points for what does cause either of those things? David Burns: Well, as I've said for years, all the causes of all psychological and interpersonal problems are totally unknown. And anyone who claims to know is just a con artist or a fool. It's just like before we knew the cause of polio there were thousands of theories and treatments for the last two or three thousand years - and everyone was sure that they knew - and it came out to be a virus and we got the Salk vaccine. We had the true answer. We can say with certainty that depression is triggered by negative thoughts, and that if you have a negative thought and believe it like "I'm no good" or "I'm a loser", then you're gonna be very unhappy. But what we don't know is why are some of us so prone to negative thinking and pessimism, and self-doubt, self-criticism. While others are maybe more outgoing and happy. And then there's a bell-shaped curve. Some of us, most of us are somewhere in between these extremes. That question we don't know the answer to, all we can say with certain... Is that all current theories are false, like the psychiatrists claim it's the chemical imbalance in the brain, and that's been... We proved that was false in 1975 at our laboratory, in Philadelphia in our depression research unit. We flooded the brains of depressed veterans with like 30, 50, 100 times boost in brain seratonin. And that's what the so-called chemical imbalance people fraudulently call seratonin the happy chemical. There's nothing in the literature that ever said it should have anything to do with mood. Somebody just made up the theory and then there was no change in the mood of the veterans, none whatsoever. And we published that in the top psychiatry journal and it was ignored for 25 years. Because the drug company people didn't wanna hear it. And recently, people are starting to quote it a lot. All these theories of causality. Nobody knows. You know, as Freud says, "Oh it's anger turned inwards, or something in childhood" and certain psycho-analytic type therapists, they believe these theories that have no research to confirm them. But the great news is we CAN help people tremendously with depression. My new book, I'll give a pump for it, "Feeling Great" - it should be able to be ordered on Amazon soon - it's coming out in September. We've got fantastic high speed techniques to cause depression to go away really fast. And that's all I care about. And then, why do people have relationship problems? My research indicates that blame is the major factor. The problem is not that your partner is to blame, the problem is that you're blaming them and not looking at your own role in the problem. And we've got ways if people want help with troubled relationships, which is generally not the case, we have tremendous techniques to help them. But anyway, that's just kind of quick - where I'm at. The TEAM-CBT that I have created, and it's now really out-performing cognitive therapy, at least in, in my hands, and those of a number of my colleagues. It emerged because of the research I was doing, a number of years ago when I was in practice. Why do some people get better fast, and others resist, or fail to improve? And I found out why that was- it has do with motivation and resistance. Something I scorned early in my career, thinking it was not important, that turned out to be incredibly important. And once we saw that we developed new high speed ways to boost motivation, and that has, and reduce resistance. The first time we meet with someone - and then that leads to amazingly rapid recovery. Neil Sattin: There are all sorts of thoughts that I'm having at this moment, that are interweaving with things that you've mentioned already in this conversation. So, I guess first... Well, I'm thinking about Emily Nagoski and her model for Human Sexuality, and what allows people to feel connected to who they are as a sexual being, and to their partner - and she talks about the dual control mechanism, which is basically what turns you on, and what turns you off, and being aware of those things. And so I'm hearing the parallel already in what you're offering in terms of what motivates you to change, and what resistances you have to change - your accelerator and your brakes. And I'm curious to know, for you, does willpower enter into the conversation at all? I've been trying to get what's his name, Roy, Baumeister on the show to talk about willpower. We've been in conversation for quite a while, but I'm wondering where you feel like willpower ends up as part of the equation? David Burns: I don't use the term willpower, but I created a term called willingness in the late 1980s when I was trying to find out why some people don't recover quickly when treated for depression. And over the years, I've come to see more of what this willingness is and what it isn't. I developed a scale. And essentially, how willing are you to do stuff to help yourself like, psychotherapy homework for example. And that was the only variable in the world literature that's ever been shown to have a causal effect on depression or changes in depression, and the causal effect is massive. And then you can think about that as resistance, or motivation, which would be the opposite. And that variable - I tested all kinds of things that people were saying cause people to get better, like therapist empathy. Everyone was thinking, that was it. Therapist Empathy is important but it doesn't have much of a causal effect on anything, surprisingly. But that variable was huge, and people doing homework had a huge causal effect on who got better. Neil Sattin: So the variable was their willingness or the variable was their taking action? Because someone could begrudgingly take action. David Burns: Yeah, yeah both. If you take action that's meaningful, to help him reduce your negative thoughts - the actual homework had effects and the motivation that the homework reflected also had a massive causal effect on changes. Recently I saw an article, somebody took this term willingness - I don't think they attributed it to me, they should have - but they developed a willingness scale for anxiety disorders and reported that's the first variable in the world literature that's been shown have causal effects on recovery from obsessive compulsive disorder - OCD. That are you willing to use exposure to confront your fears... Neil Sattin: So, willingness. So, that does intersect with the question of resistance and... So in your TEAM model, which is what you've added on and just to mention, for you listening, this conversation is, in some respects, giving you a brief synopsis of things that we went into a lot of depth into in our first two conversations together. So in our first conversation which was episode 98, we talked about your book "Feeling Good Together," and it was this question of how to help relationships using your model. We talked about that point that you just made a few moments ago that a lot of people actually don't want to change their relationship even though they might say they want to change their relationship. So we go into that question in a lot more depth in episode 98. And then in our last conversation, which was episode 133, we talked a lot about the ways that we work on our own feeling state. So the first conversation we had was more focused on relationships, then we went through all the cognitive distortions, and we talked briefly about your TEAM model, but let's just say what the TEAM stands for in this moment. Because that may be a good point for us to dive off into the other intersection that you brought up - the polio virus. And it's impossible to have a conversation right now. I think without talking about the ways that SARS-CoV-2 or covid 19 or the novel Coronavirus whatever we're gonna call it - that is impacting us. And I'm seeing it have a huge impact on so many people, including myself, people who have been resolutely positive and optimistic, and it's the way, the scale by which this seems to be affecting everyone in every walk of life - I feel like it would be great for us to bring our conversation back to that, and maybe we'll weave in, maybe we'll weave in all these things, like our resistance, and our blame, and we'll put it all a nice bow around it before we're done... David Burns: That sounds great! We're starting on my feeling good podcast series, Corona-casting and we've got two recorded and we're gonna be doing maybe one or at least one or two more. But essentially, when you're looking at the effects of the corona virus or both at intimacy relationship issuesm because we're compressed closer together, and there's more blow-ups and anger and tension being expressed. And so we've had a couple of those in my Tuesday training group at Stanford, where we sometimes do live work. It's free training for therapists in the Bay Area or from anywhere. If they come consistently, they can get unlimited training and unlimited personal therapy for free, which is a pretty good deal. And they have to come consistently, and do homework and use the brief mood survey to see how they're doing with their patients. But in the last two weeks, we've had two people very upset. Both therapists - the therapists are human - no different from anyone else - due to intense family conflicts that have erupted because of of the coronavirus. And then I've also been working on the internal mood issues - the panic, the depression, and how we use TEAM to help with those things too - again with one live, or a real example. But what team is: T is testing, E is empathy is, A is - we used to call it paradoxical agenda setting, but that was too confusing to people. So now we call it assessment of resistance, and then M is methods. Now testing means that we test every patient at the start and end of every therapy session. They do it in the waiting room. And can do it now on their cell phone so it doesn't waste any therapy time, but we find out exactly how depressed they are at the start of the session. How angry they are, how anxious they are, how happy they are, and what their relationship satisfaction is with the spouse or mother, whoever they want to be rating. And the reason we get those ratings at the start of the session is because therapists' ability to know how patients feel is close to zero. Research has proven this. And therapists don't know this. Therapists think they know how patients are feeling, but if you stop and test it, you find out the therapist's perceptions are way off base in most cases. In fact, it happened to me recently. I thought I was doing brilliantly. I'm not in practice, but I still treat a lot of people for free because I'm addicted to it. And on one of my Sunday hikes... I was working with a woman with certain issues, and I could just see that I was hitting it out of the park, and it was just an awesome hike... There were many hikers there, and afterwards, I was just congratulating myself for how outstanding I'd been in helping her, and then I discovered that she was enraged with me. I mean she was livid. I had totally totally missed the boat. And the listeners are maybe saying "Burnsie, he's probably insensitive. That wouldn't happen to me," but it happens to all therapists all the time, and most therapists don't know it. But if you get the assessments, the measurements, because then they rate you at the end on empathy, on helpfulness, on unexpressed anger, which was the case with my so-called patient, and a lot of other dimensions. And if you use the brief mood survey, it's like having an X-ray machine. You see the truth for the first time. It is the platform for all effective therapy to my way of thinking. E is empathy, you know all about empathy. And so at the start of the session, we empathize with the patient without trying to help. That was my mistake with this patient - I just thought I knew what her problem was and jumped in to cure her. I didn't bother to empathize or reduce her resistance - I violated my own rules. But fortunately, we had talked it over, and now we're closer than ever. The failure turned into something just the opposite. Neil Sattin: Right, and how often do we assume we know what's going on with another person? And just jump in, yeah, with offering something and it can be with the best intention. David Burns: That's one of the things here with the coronavirus - people are often trying to help somebody or tell them what to do. Most people just want someone to listen, they don't want someone to try to fix them, if they're panicky, or upset, or angry about the coronavirus - good listening skills is is all that 95% of people are really, really looking for. But then after we've empathized, and that takes about 30 minutes generally, in my experience. I treat most people just with one session, I don't have multiple sessions - I just treat people once and try to "cure" them or whatever that means in one two-hour session. One and done, is my approach. But if they need more, they can get more. But I rarely see people for more than one session. So you can empathize if you use what we call The Five Secrets of effective communication, which is I'm sure similar to approaches that you use. You can generally get an A or an A plus - you can form the deepest possible relationship with any person, you've never met in about 20 to 25 minutes. And then we do assessment of resistance. We say, "What do you want help with? Do you want help with anything?" And once they say what they want help with - could be a relationship problem, it could be depression, it could be anxiety - we do what we call, fractal psychotherapy. I don't know if we brought up that - fractal psychotherapy - a fractal is a little tiny formula that multiplies itself, and you can simulate almost anything in this way. This is like, how nature works. Neil Sattin: The macro level is mirrored in the tiniest piece. David Burns: Yeah, yeah, that's it. I can take a little tiny equation that a third grader could understand, and have it multiply on your computer, and it will go infinitely to the size of the universe. You can't see it all, you can only see a portion but you got it. It could create a gorgeous multi-color parrot, but the most beautiful little parrot, but if you zero in on the tiniest little piece of that, it will always be the same thing, that's just repeating itself over again. And that's how human suffering is. At any one moment in a relationship conflict, all the causes of the relationship conflict will be embedded. By one moment, I mean, what did the other person say to you, What did you say next? And if you look at that interaction, you'll see all the causes of that conflict between those two people. You don't need their history. You don't need their childhood - just one sentence from the other person, or two sentences - whatever - and exactly what you said next. That's a fractal for a relationship problem. And you have a fractal for depression. Tell me one moment you were depressed. What time of day was it, where were you, what were you feeling? Circle all of your emotions, how depressed were you? 90% okay, how anxious were you 80%? Okay, how guilty or ashamed were you? You get all of these emotions and 9 different dimensions, and you say, "What were you telling yourself, what were your negative thoughts?" And in that one moment when the person was depressed or anxious, you can find all the causes, and all the cures for all the upset they've ever had in their life. So we want the person to say, what's one moment - if you want help, give me one moment that you want help. Where were you? What time of day was it? What were you doing, who were you interacting with? Yeah, and then I generally say to the person, Okay, you were all upset yesterday at 9:30 or whatever and you were feeling 100% depressed and angry and upset and all these emotions, but what kind of help would you be looking for? And generally it comes down to... Well, I want my negative thoughts and feelings to go away. With someone recently... We had a woman 95% depressed and 95% anxious and 65% feeling inadequate, and I think frustrated at 100, and jittery 100 because of the coronavirus. She just woke up and she's trapped at home, and she's thinking that she should be more active, but she feels like procrastinating and then she's beating up on herself for not being productive. And... Neil Sattin: it sounds really familiar, actually. David Burns: Then we say, well if there's a magic button - if you press that magic button all your negative thoughts and feelings will instantly disappear, or the person you're upset with will instantly become your best friend in the whole world. With no effort, you gonna press that button? And everyone is "oh yeah, I'll press that button." And then we do what's called positive reframing - we bring their subconscious resistance to conscious awareness. This is the whole key to TEAM therapy to eliminate resistance before you try to help the person change, and that is what has opened the door to these phenomenal high-speed changes that I'm seeing. Now almost all the time when I work with people, they generally go from extreme or severe depression, not only to no depression - they go into a state of euphoria, mostly in a single two-hour session. People hearing this will get enraged, and they'll think I'm a con artist, and think it's impossible. If I'd heard this was possible 10 years ago I would have said it's a con also - don't believe that person. But I see it and I measure it, I have the data... Neil Sattin: And you're doing follow-up with those people as well? David Burns: I do from time to time... I'm building an app now, a feeling great app, that will allow us to do follow-up forever, on everybody. Doing follow-up on humans is pretty time consuming. In my clinical practice, I did relapse prevention training. I always do that before I'm done with somebody. Because we can guarantee that people will relapse. 100% of humans relapse pretty much every day. I define a relapse of one minute or more of feeling like crap. We're always relapsing all the time, but what I found is that if you do relapse prevention training, which takes about 20 or 25 minutes - relapse has not been a problem. And what I do is I just tell the person you are gonna relapse and here's what you're gonna be thinking when you relapsed, and here's how to talk back to those thoughts. And then we practice it with a role play and they record it. Then I say, if you ever do relapse, play this recording and if you're still stuck, give me a call because I offer unlimited lifetime guarantee of my work, and I'll give you tune-ups for free, if you're not satisfied. Neil Sattin: It's a pretty good deal. David Burns: Yeah, in my whole career, I've had over 40000 hours of therapy sessions - I've only had eight or nine patients who ever took me up on that. And in all of them, it was one session or two sessions and then they're on their way again. I only had one patient whoever relapsed and required intensive therapy again, to get out of her web. So I don't think the relapse thing - the people that I've been working with - I worked with a woman four or five years ago, who thought she was a bad mother, because her daughter had been shot in the face, and she thought it was her fault. Her daughter was 12 and wanted to go out and play after dinner, and she says it's a little late but I guess... Go ahead. She'd let her daughter go out every night for years, and then some neighborhood boys snuck up on her daughter and they had a high power pellet rifle - and aimed it at her face and pulled the trigger. And it hit her daughter's tooth, which exploded in her mouth, and she ran inside, sobbing, blood coming out everywhere. And she required multiple, multiple surgeries. And in addition, by the time I saw the woman she had been beating up on herself for nine years. "I've ruined my daughter's life." Her daughter was still struggling with PTSD and had failed therapy. So we did the TEAM therapy with her. I did it in a live workshop, and it took about an hour and a half, and her feelings went from extremely severe that she'd had every day for nine years. Just, "I shouldn't have let her go out and play. I'm a bad mother I've ruined her life, I can never allow myself to be happy when she's struggling. The people in the audience who are watching, they probably are judging me and thinking I'm a bad mother." And at the end, she was more than recovered - all her negative feelings went to zero, but she estimated one of them as minus a thousand and another one as minus a million an a score of zero to 100. She was in a state of euphoria. So I contacted her. I follow up with people from time to time just out of curiosity, and she sent me an email that she's still in this amazing joy, and her negative thoughts have never returned it. And the thing is that after that session, when she recovered, I have a recording of it - which I gave her and she listened to it with her daughter, who had no idea that her mother was struggling like this. And then her daughter recovered. And so it's infectious, when you're recover. But at any rate, relapse prevention training is easy to learn - it isn't easy to learn how to cause severe chronic feelings to disappear in a single session or a short period of time. It requires a lot of skill and training. But at any rate at the assessment of resistance, we bring the factors - see Anthony de Mello, maybe I said this in our last interview, he's a Jesuit mystic from the early 1900s I think, or maybe the mid-1900s but he said "We yearn for change, but cling to the familiar." And that's resistance... We say, "Oh I would really wanna lose some weight." But then when you... someone offers you a nice... like my wife made - we're cooped up here at home - but she made some beautiful peanut butter cookies. And they're so good with a fresh, crisp apple. So you say, "Well I'll lose weight next time." We have ambivalence about change. And so, we bring all the reasons to resist change to conscious awareness and patients haven't thought of it before. And what we've seen is, for the most part, at least with depression and anxiety, the reasons people resist have do with really beautiful things about them, and once they see that, they don't wanna press that magic button anymore, because then all these beautiful things will go down the drain. Like the woman who says I'm a bad mother. I hope we didn't talk about her last time. Neil Sattin: No, we haven't spoken about her yet. David Burns: I think - she's saying "I'm a bad mother" - I told her, Well, gosh, if you press that magic button all your negative thoughts and feelings will go away. But before we do that, let's say, What do they say about you that's positive and awesome? When she's telling herself I'm a bad mother what does that show about her that's positive and awesome? And what are some benefits to her? What does that actually show about her, that's beautiful and positive? Neil Sattin: Well, it would show that she really cares about being a good mother. David Burns: Yes, and that's what she came up with. And I said, "Is that important? Neil Sattin: Absolutely I would imagine so! David Burns: Is it powerful? So if you press that magic button all your sadness and concern about your daughter will disappear and you'll be euphoric, as happy as a lamb - is that what you want? "Oh no, no, I see what you mean." You see, and she's intensely anxious. What does her anxiety show about her that's positive and awesome? Neil Sattin: Well, it would again be... I'm just imagining that she's still really concerned for her daughter and wanting to ensure that she's doing whatever she can to keep her safe. David Burns: Absolutely, is that important? Neil Sattin: Definitely. David Burns: is it real? Neil Sattin: for sure. David Burns: Is it powerful? Neil Sattin: Absolutely. David Burns: Yeah. And so we went through all of her negative thoughts and feelings. And now you're concerned that the people in the audience here are judging - gonna judge you. What's awesome about that, what does that show about you that's beautiful? You're a bit afraid they're gonna think you're a bad mother. Neil Sattin: Right... so she wants to be a positive role model in the world, for motherhood. She also probably wants people to know that she takes responsibility for being a good mom - that there's something about if she were totally okay with it, then somehow she's absolving herself of all responsibility. David Burns: So does it show that she wants good close respectful relationships with the people in the audience? Neil Sattin: Definitely. David Burns: Is that a good thing? Neil Sattin: absolutely. David Burns: Is that powerful? Neil Sattin: I would say, so, yeah. David Burns: And so everything you see, we've been trained to tell patients - you have a mental disorder - you can look it up in DSM, you could qualify for probably three different mental disorders. And that makes us ashamed of our suffering. Thinking. Oh, there's something wrong with me. And what we're saying is there's actually something right with you - a lot that's right with you - your suffering comes from the part of you that's most beautiful and awesome, at least with regard to depression and anxiety, not not so much relationship conflicts, although to a certain extent. But in depression and anxiety it's something beautiful. And that's called "assessment of resistance." And then with her we came up with, I think, 22 beautiful things about her and benefits of her negative thoughts and feelings, and I said, well... Why would you wanna press that magic button 'cause then all of this will go down the drain? Why would you wanna do that? And she said "I see what you mean, but still I I'm suffering so much, isn't there something I could do?" And then we used the Magic dial and say, "Well maybe instead of pressing the magic button we could dial them down. Your depression is 90... How much would you like to be at the end of the demonstration, today?" Is there a lower level, that you could keep all these beautiful things about you and your shame, and your guilt? What would you like them to be? How anxious would you like them to be and she said "oh well 20% is enough on depression and maybe five would be enough anxiety, and shame - I'll turn that one all the way down to zero." Her anger... She was very angry at the parents who let their boys out with a loaded rifle. And she wanted that one to go from 100 to maybe 20 or something. And then we say, "Okay well, we got powerful techniques and will lower them to those levels." She had a gold she wrote down for each of her nine different negative emotions. They I say "we won't lower them any further, but we'll have to be careful 'cause the techniques I'm gonna use here are so powerful - we may overshoot." Your depression may go down to five or zero even - but don't worry if you get too depression-free or too anger-free I'll help you dial it up at the end of the session. And she liked that, and now the resistance, is gone. And then we just went on and identified the distortions and her thoughts, and showed her techniques and roleplay techniques to talk back to them, and she just blew her negative thoughts out of the water. And then at the end I said now do you think these people in the audience are thinking you're a bad mother and they're judging you? Could we do an experiment to find out if that's true? And she got very anxious and he said, "You mean maybe I could ask them?" and I said, yeah, would you wanna do that? She says No no A... And I said "your fear shows us that it's the thing to do" 'cause that's exposure, right? Confronting your fear. So she said, "Well maybe could some of you come up to the front," because a friend of mine was doing is on his tiny little cam recorder, and so talk into the microphone - and then you can ask them if they're judging you and how they feel about you. And then about 10 people came up and each one of them she said "How do you feel about me?" And they started - every one of them started crying and saying, "You're my hero. Getting up in front of the group and doing this demonstration shows what a beautiful mother and beautiful human being you are, and I'm so deep in admiration." And then she started sobbing - she couldn't believe it. To see how off-base or negative, her thoughts had been... And that was kind of the end of the session - we did the end of session measurements and everything had gone to zero and below zero. So, that's TEAM - testing, empathy, assessment of resistance, and the M is methods. That's identifying the distortions in the thoughts and turning them around. Now it plays out radically different for relationship problems when we follow the same structure. Neil Sattin: right, and I like when I've heard you talk about all the different methods that get combined, and how you work with people, that you're quick to point out that they come from all of these different places that you're sourcing all kinds of different therapy, therapeutic models and how you approach problems. David Burns: yeah, yeah, TEAM is not a school of therapy, I'm against all schools of therapy. And think they could all be got rid of, just as when the Catholic church, when science and astronomy broke away from the Catholic church, it became a science - data driven science. So now you see how fantastic physics and astrophysics and all of that, has become... And I think that therapy you can draw from all the schools of therapy and the M equals methods. I use over 100 methods really that are on my list for therapists, and they come from all schools of therapy. But then we should be focusing on basic research, to see how all of psychotherapy works. And then having a structure for therapy. TEAM is a structure for all of psychotherapy. That's how therapy works - rather than schools of therapy, which are generally guru-driven rather than a science-driven, and are pushing some theory of some person who has a lot of followers. Neil Sattin: And is the idea that you're paying attention to what is actually working for the individual? 'cause I can see that some things might statistically look like they work more than other things, but if it's not working for the person in front of you, then it doesn't matter how statistically proven, it is to be effective. David Burns: Yeah, like her thought - the first thought she wanted to work on from her daily mood log was "I never should have let my daughter go out and play." And in my mind or on paper, I generate what's called a recovery circle. I imagine that thought's in a circle that she's trapped in - and then there's arrows coming out of the circle. And each arrow is a different way of escape and at the end of each arrow would be one of these hundred methods that I use. Like a method could be identifying the distortions, or externalization of voices, or examine the evidence, or a downward interpersonal arrow, or the hidden emotion technique, or whatever techniques. And then I go through them one at a time, in my mind, until I find the "Aha!" one that just implodes the system and the patient suddenly recovers. This recovery generally happens in a matter of... Oh, maybe a minute or something like that. When the patient suddenly sees that the negative thought is not true, at that very moment they will improve or recover. Neil Sattin: Okay, I'm wondering if you'd be willing to do something that I've only done occasionally, here on the show, but what I'd love to maybe try if you're up for it is... is to do a little work together. Because I feel like one of the reasons that I reached out to you is that when I was thinking, Okay, we're in the middle of a crisis, at least that's what the thoughts tell us - and the news tells us - and most of us are living somewhat sheltered in place. We're not leaving our homes... So the world is different in this moment. I was thinking, Okay, who... Who do I know that I would most trust to show up in a moment like this? And you were the first person that came to mind for me and so it's... David Burns: So kind of you to say - thank you - you're one of my heroes. Neil Sattin: Thank you David, I appreciate that. And so what I'm hoping is that for everyone listening, that if they... I think it's so instructive to hear you talk about the process and, as you know, witnessing the process might also be really helpful for people as they think like, Okay, how do I deal with everything that's happening in the world right now? [First we revisit the data set to see if we could find any more causal relationships or correlations] David Burns: We're looking at the relationship between relationship satisfaction, happiness or unhappiness on the one hand, and then a 10-item happiness scale. It's things like "I feel worthwhile, I feel close to people. I feel productive," and so forth. We'll get on to our exciting personal work, which is gonna be way cooler than research for your listeners. But we did get some clear cut results here, with, I think the... N on this is 9000 sessions - and so we can now say... Okay, let's just, let's look at the results, right? Okay, we've gotta just make one last adjustment. Does happiness lead to better relationships? Or does better intimacy cause feelings of happiness? That seems like a reasonable question, don't you think? So, and I'm just, I'm setting this up in the software I have no idea of what these results are gonna show, but they do, they do show a fairly clear cut result here. The correlation between positive feelings and relationship satisfaction is about.38 - it's a modest correlation - not huge - you take the square root of that which would be about 15 or - the square. The square of.38 is about.15. So there's about 15% overlap between how satisfied you feel in your relationship with your spouse, or partner, and how happy you are. Now, in one of these models I declared that there was no causal effect of positive feelings on relationship satisfaction. In other words, that when you're reporting how satisfied you are with your spouse or your partner, we're testing the theory that... How happy or unhappy you are, has nothing to do with that. Now do you think that's a true or false theory? Neil Sattin: I would say that that's - intuitively I would say false. That your level of relationship satisfaction would impact how happy you say you are. David Burns: Well, you're, you're right, you're a genius. Because it has no causal effect whatsoever. Now, how about the other hypothesis? Is your happiness, feeling of happiness, influenced by how satisfied you are in your relationship with your spouse or partner? Neil Sattin: That was the one that I was saying, I thought would there would be a correlation. David Burns: Well, we're talking about causal effects not correlation... Neil Sattin: Right, so, in other words, with the first one, does your inner state of happiness cause you to report more satisfaction in your relationships? David Burns: Right, and, and you predicted "no", and you were right... Neil Sattin: But that was the one where it was 15% like that there was 15%... David Burns: No - that's just the correlation between them, but that doesn't mean there's a causal relationship. Neil Sattin: Okay, got it, thank you for clarifying that. David Burns: Yeah, but if you're very unhappy and then you become very happy, that's not gonna affect how you report your relationship satisfaction or dissatisfaction. And that's kind of what I found in my pilot study too, that when we made people's depression, disappear, it had no effect on their level of satisfaction with happiness or unhappiness in their marriage. Now we're looking at the other direction. Does how happy or unhappy you are, in your relationship, does that affect your feeling of depression? Neil Sattin: I'm gonna go out on a limb and say Yes. David Burns: Yeah, and again, you're right, so you... I think you need to go into statistics. Good statistics should reflect common sense. It often gives surprises. There is a causal effect there, and I can tell you how big the causal effect is. My relationship satisfaction scale, is highly accurate. It goes from zero to 30. So let's say your relationship satisfaction increased by 10 points - that would be a huge improvement. And it's hard to get that in a clinical situation when someone's unhappy with their marriage. But if you can boost it by 10 points there would be four-tenths of a point increase in the positive feeling scale, which goes from zero to 40. So it's the same result that I had in Philadelphia. There is a causal effect in the direction you mentioned, but it is so tiny as to be kind of theoretically and clinically, meaningless. And it's kind of an interesting result, because it means that how happy or depressed you are, on the one hand, and then how close you feel to people in general or to your partner on the other hand - that they're not related to each other - for the most part, there's no connection. So, the tools that you would need to improve a relationship and the theory of what causes bad relationships is totally different from the tools you would need to treat depression or boost happiness and the things that cause depression or happiness. That they're independent domains - they are not linked. Neil Sattin: So, there you did see a causal effect, but it was pretty small. David Burns: Yeah, it's exactly what I reported in my original paper in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology in the mid-1990s or something like that - and no one's ever attempted to replicate it. Today, I have the first replication studies of that. And it is important because it means, let's say you're a therapist, and someone comes in with depression, and they're lonely or they have a poor relationship. Clairman and Cole [sic] have this thing called Interpersonal therapy where they treat depression by improving people's relationships, and then they think that that's effective. And of course, the therapy, all therapies for depression have a placebo effect and not much more. And that's true of theirs. And so while they do get people somewhat better. It's not - the depression doesn't improve because of improved relationships - improving relationships will not cause you to feel less depressed or happier. Neil Sattin: It's so interesting, it's so interesting. And I guess this must be something that I'd account for, I'd have to account for it in a different way. At this point it makes sense to me... People often talk to me about their relationships, I think, because of what I do. But prior to what I did, I found people talking to me a lot about their relationships, and it always seems, it has always seemed as though that if something isn't going well, that that weighs heavily on them and it does ripple out into the other aspects of how they perceive themselves to be doing. So what that would suggest - what you just revealed - is that we may harbor this belief that there's a connection there, when in fact those are two completely independent domains and should be treated as such. So, what someone says, "How are you doing" and you... You say like... Well, I'm okay, but my relationship is horrible or whatever. Then maybe the next response that should happen given what you just said, is like, "okay, that makes sense. Let's separate those two, because they are a completely separate or almost completely separate." David Burns: Right, right, and because you don't have a big ego, like probably your self is dead, so you're open and can receive. But the problem with most mental health professionals is that they think they know things, and so it's hard to accept new findings. I find these new findings that are so different from what I believe to be, in a way, kind of exciting, because what it means is that we have new understanding of how the world works, and then we can use that to refine our effectiveness as therapists. But sometimes it's really hard to accept what research teaches us because it shuts down what we thought intuitively to be the case. But I found this also true, that when - I have treated thousands and thousands and thousands of hours of people with depression and now I have tools to cause depression to disappear most of the time, just really fast in a single two-hour session. And I never work on boosting relationships - I can cause depression to go away without any attention to how happy or unhappy a person is in their intimate relationships. And if they also want help with relationships, then I would use a completely different set of therapeutic tools from the ones I used to treat depression. So it's just kind of interesting and you always have to take it with a grain of salt, because you can fool yourself with research too. But I've seen this now with two huge databases exactly the same results. Neil Sattin: I'd be interested to see how this... Not that we're gonna do this right now, but how this would overlap with say all the research and modeling that John Gottman has done, and see where those datasets correlate with... Where they line up with each other, and where there might be disparities between the two. David Burns: Yeah, absolutely, and if you review the literature too, if you want publish a paper, you have to say so-and-so found this and so and so found that... And so forth. But the kind of analysis that I'm doing here is-it's difficult to do, it's the most difficult topic in all of statistics when you have A and B - the kind of the chicken and egg thing. Most people don't know how to do this. This kind of modeling. But it would be fun. Maybe he has never measured happiness at the same time that he's measured relationship satisfaction - maybe he's never measured depression at the same time he's measuring relationship satisfaction. That's what you need to measure these things. at time A and then measure them again at time B later on - and then you can model the causal connections if any between the variables. But yes, it would be fun to find that out, but let's do something cool and truly awesome now and get rid of statistics...

Many of us have dealt at sometime in our life with depression, anxiety, burnout or stress. Many of us know what it's like to fight on a daily basis with the black dog.    In this very candid and honest interview with Author Matt Calman we dive deep into the how depression and mental health struggles can catch anyone of us out and how we can courageously fight our way back to health and happiness.   Matt used the challenge of the Coast to Coast to work through the demons in his mind and the importance of having a physical challenge and goal when dealing with derailed emotions. His book "The Longest Day" chronicles the ups the downs of his journey back to health culminating in the successful finishing of the ultimate challenge NZ's Coast to Coast multisport  race    The infamous Coast to Coast is a multisport competition held annually in New Zealand. It is run from the west coast to the east coast of the South Island, and features running, cycling and kayaking elements over a total of 243 kilometres (151 mi). It starts in Kumara Beach and traditionally finished in the Christchurch suburb of Sumner, but since 2015 finishes in New Brighton.   You can find out more about Matts book at https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/other-books/The-Longest-Day-Matt-Calman-9781988547305   We would like to thank our sponsors for this show:   For more information on Lisa Tamati's programs, books and documentaries please visit www.lisatamati.com   For Lisa's online run training coaching go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/runni... Join hundreds of athletes from all over the world and all levels smashing their running goals while staying healthy in mind and body.   Lisa's Epigenetics Testing Program https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics/ measurement and lifestyle stress data, that can all be captured from the comfort of your own home   For Lisa's Mental Toughness online course visit: https://www.lisatamati.com/page/mindsetuniversity/   For Lisa's free weekly Podcast "Pushing the Limits" subscribe on iTunes or your favorite podcast app or visit the website https://www.lisatamati.com/page/podcast/   Lisa's third book has just been released. It's titled "Relentless - How A Mother And Daughter Defied The Odds" Visit: https://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/ for more Information   ABOUT THE BOOK: When extreme endurance athlete, Lisa Tamati, was confronted with the hardest challenge of her life, she fought with everything she had. Her beloved mother, Isobel, had suffered a huge aneurysm and stroke and was left with massive brain damage; she was like a baby in a woman's body. The prognosis was dire. There was very little hope that she would ever have any quality of life again. But Lisa is a fighter and stubborn. She absolutely refused to accept the words of the medical fraternity and instead decided that she was going to get her mother back or die trying. This book tells of the horrors, despair, hope, love, and incredible experiences and insights of that journey. It shares the difficulties of going against a medical system that has major problems and limitations. Amongst the darkest times were moments of great laughter and joy. Relentless will not only take the reader on a journey from despair to hope and joy, but it also provides information on the treatments used, expert advice and key principles to overcoming obstacles and winning in all of life's challenges. It will inspire and guide anyone who wants to achieve their goals in life, overcome massive obstacles or limiting beliefs. It's for those who are facing terrible odds, for those who can't see light at the end of the tunnel. It's about courage, self-belief, and mental toughness. And it's also about vulnerability... it's real, raw, and genuine. This is not just a story about the love and dedication between a mother and a daughter. It is about beating the odds, never giving up hope, doing whatever it takes, and what it means to go 'all in'. Isobel's miraculous recovery is a true tale of what can be accomplished when love is the motivating factor and when being relentless is the only option.   Here's What NY Times Best Selling author and Nobel Prize Winner Author says of The Book: "There is nothing more powerful than overcoming physical illness when doctors don't have answers and the odds are stacked against you. This is a fiercely inspiring journey of a mother and daughter that never give up. It's a powerful example for all of us." —Dr. Bill Andrews, Nobel Prize Winner, author of Curing Aging and Telomere Lengthening. "A hero is someone that refuses to let anything stand in her way, and Lisa Tamati is such an individual. Faced with the insurmountable challenge of bringing her ailing mother back to health, Lisa harnessed a deeper strength to overcome impossible odds. Her story is gritty, genuine and raw, but ultimately uplifting and endearing. If you want to harness the power of hope and conviction to overcome the obstacles in your life, Lisa's inspiring story will show you the path." —Dean Karnazes, New York Times best selling author and Extreme Endurance Athlete.   Transcript of the Podcast:   Speaker 1: (00:01) Welcome to pushing the limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa [inaudible], brought to you by Lisatamati.com. Speaker 2: (00:12) Today I have another special interview with a very lovely friend Matt Calman. Now met is a journalist and he is the author of the longest day and matt shares his journey today through a very bad depression and coming back and using the coast to coast is his journey back to health. So it's a very, very interesting and insightful and really real interview, which I'm very pleased to bring you before we get over to matt just want to remind you my book relentless is now out in available on all the platforms, on audio books, on eBooks, on Amazon, on Kindle. You can find out all about about it at relentlessbook.lisatamati.com. That's relentlessbook.lisatamati.com I'd also like a word to all the runners out there. If you've been sitting on the fence about joining our online run training club running hot now's a good time to do it during the covid crisis, we have made a special so that it's more affordable for people. Speaker 2: (01:14) We have a 12 week excess membership excess for 49 us dollars at the moment for 12 weeks and get access to all of our programs from 5k up to a hundred miles. And we have a very holistic run training approach. So if you've never run before, this is your first time that you have having a go at it or whether you're doing your hundredth a hundred kilometer race. We'd love to talk to you and help you build a very structured plan and a holistic approach based on our five pillars, which are the running, the mobility, the strength and nutrition and the mindset. So check that out. That's on my website, at lisatamati.com. Now, before I go, please do give the show a rating and review. I really, really appreciate that on iTunes if you could. It really helps the show get exposure. And I love to hear your feedback of any of the episodes have really touched a chord with you. Or if you've found great help with this, please share it with your networks and also write to me and let me know. Really, really appreciate it right now over to matt Calman Speaker 3: (02:17) Well, Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. This is Lisa Tammany here and I am with matt Calman. Matt, how you doing? Good, thanks Lisa. Thank you for having me on. Oh, it's very, very exciting to have you met as a fellow New Zealand author. and, as I said, you don't know. He has written the book the longest stay recently, very recently telling his life story. And I'm going to share my story. I'm going to share his story with us. There. It is the longest life as I was watching on YouTube. I must grab a book met you know, really excited to delve into your story a little bit today and your backgrounds and how this book came about and your, your history. So give us a bit of a rundown on who you are and where you come from and your family and so on. And then it still haven't your story. Speaker 4: (03:03) Well, I'm, I'm 43 now. I was born and mastered them and it's very small town Amsterdam. Then my dad worked there as an insurance man then got transferred to Christchurch when I was about three years old. So like, yeah, I don't, I didn't know, I don't know Amsterdam then very well, but I had the roots there, a lot of friends there, and then we put down some roots in Christchurch and that's where I grow up. So I spent all the way through to my sort of early twenties and Christchurch. And then I met my wife, ah, when I was 19 and she was 17. She was just finishing up high school, took it to the bowl. And you pretty early on actually throw me and I know that she was going to be the ones who may, yeah, but a fairy tale really. Speaker 4: (03:52) Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so we're still dealing. We've got a couple of daughters now teen and nearly seven two girls and I've been, I'm at home with them for the last nine years. So when my, when my first, our first daughter was about seven months old I left my job as a journalist. I've been a journalist for a few years of the dominion post. I was living in Wilmington at that time with my wife's where she started her legal career. She's now a partner at a, at a sort of a good sized law firm and Christchurch. And we're living, you know, living the dream. But yeah, it's a, it certainly hasn't been a straight road life pays its ups and dances. You know, Lisa, I've read your book and I read about all your ups and downs and yeah, pretty inspiring stuff. Speaker 3: (04:48) Oh, thanks man. Yeah. And I'm keen to Delvin zoo story because you know, I love, I love people who share, they are the real stuff, the, the stuff that isn't perhaps pretty in the stuff that isn't glamorous, the difficult times. And your, your story is certainly inspiring. So let's start with where it all went wrong. You know, cause this sounds like a fairy tale. You meet your beautiful wife, you, your kids and lost going. Great. We did it all. We did things start to go wrong for you. Speaker 4: (05:15) Let's see. In Congress thing about all of us about depression, about how it doesn't discriminate it, it touches people who've had wonderful life like I've had. Well, and it touches people who struggled. It doesn't, yeah, it's not really about how good your lifers. Yes, from the outside, my life was perfect. Two beautiful children, amazing wife. We don't want for anything. We were pretty comfortable financially. Live in a lovely house in Christ, in a leafy suburb internally for probably it had been years, you know, it was like a tap dropping, slowly dropping, dropping, dropping and building up on this internal struggle I was having with Myla identity with my direction in life. There were a number of factors. There was, there was some sort of, at the time I had my breakdown and at the end of April, 2017 come off the back of a very stressful situation with, with someone who had kind of lied to us and taken the money and not a lot of money, but I took it very personally coming out of the back of that I had had some panic attacks like the year before, my first major panic attack was off the back of a situation. Speaker 4: (06:32) When I started to realize that things weren't right. And so I've been, I've been in hindsight dealing with depression and anxiety, social anxiety for most of my life. So before I knew what to call it, because I'd always, you know, I compared myself with other people and you look at the worst case scenario, the worst of the worst person who has suffered terrible mental illness and there's a full range. You're somewhere on, everyone's somewhere on the spectrum. So I never thought that I really had a problem with, with the time to, to fix or to try and address. So for years, this tape dropped and dropped and dropped. But it finally got to the point where I reached my breaking point and, and that's where the book really kind of begins. You know, I, this is, this was where my life kind of fell apart and I was diagnosed with depression, something that one, and for New Zealand as well experienced in the lifetimes. It's very, very common. We don't talk about it, but from the time I had my breakdown, that was when I started to she and to reach out and actually address it properly. Yup. Speaker 3: (07:42) And I mean, this is, this is, you know, like we do sometimes think that because I didn't, you know, love through the most horrific thing. The four don't have a right to be depressed in any way. And that's really a dangerous thing what you say, because then you don't address it. You don't know. Look out front. And you know, having had depression myself and having it rock bottom a number of times in my life I can totally relate to this feeling. So what actually had of it? How did it manifest itself when it really crashed? And this is what usually happens, you have a big crash. Speaker 4: (08:19) Well, basically I had been building out for months, weeks and months really seriously to the point where I was, I was desperate and feeling you really love myself. I was really irritable. Which is, which was a number one symptom and, and nightly mean like does anger where it's a rational, you don't really know what it's about, where it's coming from. And so like I was snapping it feeling really bad and apologizing straight away. And then, Mmm, in rhino it was sort of aware that things were about off, but she didn't, I, I mainly had it from everyone around me and I was just feeling internalizing everything. I was feeling all this mental strain, a lot of it, very subconscious. And it was just building up on me, building up and when it really crashed my, my daughters that had their cousins around for a sleepover extra. Speaker 4: (09:15) And so, Oh, it was under a bit of a bit of pressure there and I wasn't feeling good in myself. And I kind of had a boat, an outburst in front of all the kids in the kitchen over breakfast. I went upstairs and I was just sort of sliding back on my bed, really searching for what was going on, a real, I was feeling very desperate. And then, and then I looked over and I saw a vision and I'm actually in my bedroom now, so I looked over at the on suite away and a version of myself hanging in the doorway. No. Did well flashed into my, I w it wasn't, it wasn't even in my mind, it was like Alison nation. There was signs of it and a real that it just scared me straight. It gave me a white to, to the real problem that was there was head name. Speaker 4: (10:07) And I, it was, it was very frightening. Mmm. They fleshed up and then it was gone. You know, very quickly, and I described this in the book and that was the moment I reached out. I already had a and they haven't used for help. I've been seeing a counselor for, for the panic attacks I'd had the year before, but I got through that sort of put the bandaid on there, which was great, but hadn't really dealt with the main thing, which was this depression that was coming. Yep. And so I reached out for here and cold out for my wife and from there moment there was, there was no more facade of, of being okay. And it'll come down and it was just relating, Speaker 3: (10:52) No. How was that for a man on an eye? Like, you know, woman generally have a, a slightly perhaps easier time or sharing their emotions and how was it for a, you know, good Kay, we broke two to open up about something like this and you know, even to write about this afterwards is, is it quite, you know, like difficult and how's it been? How's it been received? Speaker 4: (11:15) I think for me it maybe was a little bit easier for me than for maybe other men who don't have an outlet. Yeah. I'd been a writer, you know, for a long time in June, freelance for a long time. I've been writing a blog about my life at home with the children in the early days. The ups and downs of life in a really honest blog about parenting and which was pretty entertaining to people were in serious, you know, I touched on some serious topics of miscarriage and grief and the stresses of being a parent and, and the identity of being a, being in the workplace and then coming home and not having that anymore. And then when I gave up alcohol in 2016 my blog, I'd started blogging and The signs, Diane is, is a good friend of mine, a lot of Dane has written books about her sobriety and, and keeps up the website living sober, which I joined. Speaker 4: (12:09) I'd done an article for drug foundation on her. And she inspired me to one of the people that really inspired me to give up drinking and, and just say, you know, get rid of that depressant. Yes. It's like they had a way basically taking that away rule the mental health staff to the four that was already bubbling away. I no longer had alcohol to kind of put the bandaid on the problem. I had to deal with it. So this is a very common thing that people would give up. Alcohol, I have to kind of deal with life in the war and without, without that thing, help them. So yeah, so like probably losing sight of the questionnaire, which often happens with me when I go on and on. But I have been blogging about, I've been doing this daily blog on those pseudonyms. Speaker 4: (12:54) So man, three, six, five. And actually if you, if you Google sideman three, six, five, the blogs are start up online. I, I blog for a year, the first year of sobriety that about seven, six, seven months and it became a blog about more about depression and about, about the struggles I was having. Wising up to that stuff. I'd already had the panic attack and that started writing about that. And then they know I, you know, I had my big crash and I stopped writing for a period of probably at least a week or a week and a half. We are obviously just trying to get through and getting through each moment really. And I wasn't able really to do anything. You know, I was, I was stripped back and control. I couldn't drive. I couldn't do much more than lie on the couch and just try and get, you know, get through the day. Speaker 4: (13:43) And so when I started riding again, I reentered the blog. Mmm. Talking about the depression. So being open about it, it already happened. So I win. You know, I decided to write the book, you know, I knew, I knew that writing as honestly as possible, it was really important. So you don't just talk in generalities and let people fill in the gaps. Oh, I've got my experience. I'm not an expert on depression, but I'm an expert on my own depression. And in that way, there's this universality of it. No, I mean everyone has a very unique experience in different ways that they can coping and get stroller. But I, I put my roadmap down in the book to help out other people you know, build their own roadmap. So Speaker 3: (14:27) You've come through this time and I know that you know, and it's moving to the part of the story where, you know, it's called the longest day for a reason. Speaker 4: (14:38) What happened there also in February, 2018. So I'm sort of, I'm throw the worst part of the depression, the, the railway early days when I'm getting on the medication, you know, I'm getting back to functioning and, and my, my heat's clear and the fog is lifting and I'm starting to look for the challenge, the next thing that I can do because basically you guys stripped all responsibility. I just stopped. I was a big being at home. It was actually easier for me and I don't know how people who work do this. Rhino, he was able to take all that pressure off me and I could just work on my recovery. And so then I was looking for the next thing to actually do the next challenge. And my friends were finishing the coast to coast, which is a rice that goes from the West coast, New Zealand tomorrow, serpentine beach. Speaker 4: (15:27) And then it goes all the way across the country over the big mountain. And then you're on down the road down the why man and then you're cycling correct across J 70 case last bike ride into this terrible kid, went on the straightest route and use the longest straightest road in New Zealand. CFA arrived and you're finishing it and you brought in a new youth Sumner that can the day speed do any, it was one of the famous Cathy lunch, all these famous famous people writing Curry, Sam Klein as the Legion, the rice in the moment, four time winner and the most iconic race and captured it beautifully between one side of the country and the other, my friends were finishing and I decided to go out for the first time either to see the finish of this race. I've lived in Christchurch most of my life, always been kind of kept divided by this rice, nivo bean physically there, this is the mistake I made. Speaker 4: (16:12) I go into the race, you go to this race and you get drawn into the rice and you get inspired by all these amazing people. No half of them don't look like acting like that prepared within an inch of their lives. And I are all finishing this rice. You see what it means to them you see on their faces but the struggle. Yeah, the joy, the hardship that the just getting over all these little struggles along the way to get across the Island. And it's, it's not, it's not a sure thing. You start this race and you don't know what's going to happen. You can prepare for everything, but it gets, stuff gets chucked in you. And this is just like as a metaphor for life, this race. So I've seen my friends Spanish, I see Sam clot actually finish. You finished about half an hour before my friends cause the one day people, you even do it in two days or one day. Speaker 4: (17:02) People, we don't know that was raised the two day people start on the second day and sorry, the one night people start on the second day of the rice. I winner in the late people, I pass a lot of the highly end of the two day field, so the flower people. And so I stay in class one time. I say the winner of the rice, I say my friends finish. I see them embraced by their families. They run the last bit of the kids and I'm like, I want to buy the of this. I'm going to. So I decided, I left, I left the race and I'm biking back to my house, 10 Ks away. And so, and as I was biking home I already knew I was going to sign up in 2019 and just would be the vehicle I would use to prep does doing things differently in my life to approach challenges differently because a lot of my problems had been, I've been so hard on myself. The things that are tried or not tried, I'd mainly been a spectator on the sidelines of my own life. Wanting to do some of these things and thinking, no, that's not for may because God, I know I couldn't do that and I decided, right. All right, I'm going to do it. If my friends can do this, I can do this. Speaker 4: (18:14) I mainly knew that this was the vehicle for my book because I'd always wanted to ride. Speaker 3: (18:19) Yes. This well in sport, you know, like, I mean, you know, I've got different, but some of stories really. Speaker 4: (18:31) No, I'm not. I'm Lisa, the late on sort of a, I would, NASA, I'm on a little bit higher than a weekend warrior. But well, no, kind of just hanging under there at a late level. Speaker 3: (18:42) Yeah. Well that's the funny thing Matt. I'm totally not a late and never have been. Oh, hold on. Ever done his work for 25 years at something and got, you know, halfway good at it. Speaker 4: (18:55) It doesn't matter though, isn't it? Yeah, it's the price you say, Speaker 3: (18:58) But, but you know, like as far as ability and like, you know, you put me in a race with you. If I had to go for a jog for you with you, you'd be like off I cry. That like, come on. All right. My husband does it every day. You know, I like, I'm slow. But that doesn't matter. Right. It's, it's the journey that you go on on the inside. That's really what's important. And your, your story actually reminds me of Charlie angle's story a little bit, except he was much more extreme metallic. Charlie is he's the one at random right across the Sahara and he's legend. Widowed in, in, in his story was well, much more alcohol and drugs. So he, yeah, he took, yeah. Now stories to the other end of crazy, but on both ends. Speaker 3: (19:46) But, but this, this, this, the same reason nights through so many of our lives. And when we take up a sport that is hugely challenging, whether it's the coast of ghosts or deer Valley or doing something crazy, it is the hardest thing you've ever done, but at the same time as the best, most rewarding experience. And it changes your perception of who you are. I mean, I, I remember even like when I met my husband at the beginning he was coming to me for running coaching and you know, he wanted to do this charity of running 27 case in full BA. He's a firefighter and full caps, you know, the yellow plastic suits with full BA for charity. And he wanted to know about running in the heat. So who better to ask, right? Speaker 3: (20:32) Teach teacher may touch him in any, any does it. And it goes, it raises lots of money. Awesome. And he, he always thought that ultra marathon runners had to be special types of people with super talents. And he started when he started to get to know me to realize, hang on, there's nothing special about this church. She's just funny. And it realized that, hang on, I could probably do this. And then his life, you know, he's gone on to do lots of ultras and so on. And this story of head over and over and over and over again because we sit ourselves, limitations of what we're capable of, don't we? And we, and we think we can overcome them. And you saw in your friends, so you considered perhaps equals to you that they could do this and therefore that was a gateway for you to Speaker 4: (21:17) Absolutely. And I think also like, you know, really on our mind, I knew that I wasn't going to be able to do the coast to coast until the end, you know, so I turned up. So yeah, so it's not like it's not 243 kilometers across a mountain and across the country and down the river. It's a million States. And so you just start walking towards her and then why it's all that process stuff. So, and there was also a massive antidote to the depression as like depression really does. I mean, they say that old saying goes a depression lives in the past and regrets and the things that you've done and things you're holding on. So anxiety lives in the future and worries about what's going to happen up here. And I had both of those things going on. So, so the coast to coast and training, like you know, you've got to be in the moment. Speaker 4: (22:04) You described this many times Googling down evens pass at 70 Ks an hour on your bike. There's potholes all over the place. It's very much you should, you really need a P in the moment. So, so the poster goes, training draws the past and in the future into the present in the end. So, so you are, you are just soaking up that experience. Like in the past when I trained, I would off be beating myself up about God. I wish I was better and and, and I'd have pain in my body. I some thought, I wish I wasn't hurting and all the stuff, you know, and, and I'd be just fixated on this little rigid small goal of I have to run a certain time in my half marathon. I've always wanted to break an hour, an hour and a half so I could consider myself a good runner. Speaker 4: (22:50) I was like, well, okay, a lot of people would have killed to do, do my best time of, of an hour, 31, whatever it was. And so, you know, I'd never quite made that. And maybe one day it doesn't matter to me now it's, it's really more about the duty because like the, all that time I spent or writing myself and being so hard on myself, and then I wouldn't reach the goal and then I would be like, Oh, there's just another reason why I'm not good enough. Yeah. You know, you know, a lot of people think like this and like, I thought like this all my life. Yeah. The first thing the first thing I had to fix, Mmm. When I was recovering from the, from my breakdown, well, it was my relationship with myself. So you're like, you know, you're talk about you need to lock yourself. Speaker 4: (23:37) That is really important. But to really truly like yourself and say, Oh, my K is so powerful. Mmm. And it does just the mindset tweak. It's just a shift in mindset to the point of, Mmm. From that moment on, you don't hear about all that external stuff. You don't hear about missing up, you don't care about falling out of your boat. So from that point on, once I've fixed my relationship with myself and I, and I went into this training, Mmm. Like a fraud. If I'd been the old man, I would have fallen out of my diet and I would have packed it all up and said, fuck it. I'm not going to do it. I'll, sorry. Sorry. Did y'all eat a data and, and carried me through the year because I'm embracing making mistakes and knowing that it was all a learning process and nothing's perfect. Speaker 4: (24:28) And my race, my two races, I edit coast to coast. Neither of them were perfect. I loved every minute of both races. The one, the one which is encapsulated in the book and then the one that I did this year earlier this year the best experiences of my life because you know, I've, I've now gained this massive community of people. Oh, I'm so connected now to hundreds and hundreds of people that do this race. It's opened my life up instead of like me going, God, I wish, I wish I had more friends. So I wish that I hadn't with deep friendships in my life, all that stuff was there all along, but he still wasn't being a very good friend to myself. I didn't feel I deserved it. Now that I'm, that I know that I'm okay, I realize that and I'm embracing that, but everything else has just improved. So I still struggle with depression and fate. Speaker 4: (25:19) Two days ago I really crushed again, like it had been building up subconsciously. My, my lockdown experience has been like a dream can be to a lot of people's and like kids have been so wonderful, but yeah, but I haven't, I need this space. I need the aligned time. And I need the time to just risk that, you know, when the kids are at school, if I'm not doing well, yup. You know, I say it's okay for me to risk cause I need to do that or there's certain strategies I've put in place and I haven't been able to do that. So that boat up to the point where it just all came out and, and, and I was like the irritability and the anger and the just feeling side low and just the brain fog was bad. And, but I've been here before. I lived experience, I know passes in the news today I signed up and did a yoga class and 9:00 AM to just get my day rolling in the right way and, and just yeah, like in street, like your home, I'm homeschooling. I'm not a teacher. Speaker 3: (26:18) You're not alone in this panel. I think there are many linear, many parents now they going, hell yeah, I get you. Speaker 4: (26:25) So you'd be a stay. It doesn't matter. Really the bigger picture is that you're okay. Yeah. And that everyone's happy. Speaker 3: (26:32) You know what? And what I find powerful about data to say, sometimes people write about, you've written a book, I've written three books. People think you've got it all together now you've written about it in a year together and you're, you're on top of it. And nothing could be further from the truth. We are all on a journey and as you said before, there's a spectrum and there's a, you know, we're all improving our mental health and I've been doing a lot of study lately on functional genomics and looking at genes and your predisposition to certain ways of you know, how long adrenaline stays in your body, how fast the dopamine mean is take, is processed, all of these chemical things and actually have an influence, which I'd love to talk to you about actually separately. I'll, I'll on that topic. When you, once you start to understand your genes, I think that all and what you can do to, to help support that that will be a really another great thing to, to, to have in your toolkit. Speaker 3: (27:24) But we need talkative. This isn't talking about like every time I go through a horrible experience and hard times, I really have a little bit more then I can use it. It can, it can either break me and there've been things that have nearly broken me and where I thought I was broken. And that was that. But you know, I managed to stand up. And then when you do stand back up, you've got another tool that you've been able to overcome. And this is why [inaudible] this story is so powerful and I really encourage people to go and get the book the longest day. Mine's on its way. And I'm looking forward to diving into it and into the story. And it really, if, if this, if this interview you guys sitting out there listening to this, if this is the reason I did with you, what's Matt saying? Speaker 3: (28:12) And you think that this could help you know, ground. Grab that book the longest day, shake it out, see what Mets all about and, and see if, if there's something in there for you that can help you. We write these books because we're just sharing Ella stories and we're not experts necessarily, but the, the value lies in the [inaudible] okay. In being open sharing honestly. Yeah. And giving other people a new perspective on the crap that they're going to, cause sometimes you cannot see the forest for the trees when you're in the middle of it. And another thing is, yeah, Speaker 4: (28:49) That your experiences as, as you need better does really quite universal. And the more you share about what's happening for you, then then you're giving other people permission. Feel connected. But also to share about, back to you, like, so you get back what you reflect out. And I, I've, I've seen it, what's going on with me with a lot of people, perfect strangers in a way, within 20 seconds of meeting a perfect stranger. I've gotten really good at being able to just sorta segue into a real deep conversation. And it's really one voice because, okay, we're, we're all, we're all sort of wandering around the planet aimlessly and then we collide with each other and we can make these really kind of amazing connections. And you don't have to be the best friend or the person you'd leave them. You might never see them again. But if I felt quite special way and then Speaker 3: (29:40) You feel and Speaker 4: (29:42) Going around being, I mean we have to do with our professional hats on and network and song be a certain way and so on. Well I don't have to, cause I'm sad I'm gay so I'm the most unprofessional person. Speaker 3: (29:52) But this is a thing and this is why I think we buy some, you know, we both kept them of our own ship cause I don't go to work either. I work my ass off but I wasn't going to work is that I can be who I am and that is the most precious thing to me and I can be the real person and not the person that, you know, people want me to be, you know, at least my son. You can just be you and [inaudible] and you can connect and this is what the other are that sport does. And when you're out doing the, the either coast to coast or an ultra marathon somewhere, you go through so much shit and that period of time and so much hardship and so much pain and so much doubts and so much whatever and the preparation and everything that the person that's running next to you or your crew or whatever the case may be, that going through it with you and they're experiencing. Speaker 3: (30:40) And that creates a bond that can, that is better than what the normal bottoms when you just go to have coffee with your friends, you know, and it's like, you know, when soldiers go to war together and they come back, they have a bond that I don't think we as outside people can ever actually understand because they've wrapped together and there is a beauty in this, even though it can be hard at the time. There is a beauty in that as well. And having those deep connections with other humans is a real human need. And you know, we, we sort of sometimes think we can be lone wolfs and we can, I mean, I used to definitely try and be the lone Wolf and I don't need everybody and and it was only because I was hurting, you know, it was only cause I didn't have that connection that I really sought needed. And you do dumb things in, you know ma, I know you've got a, an appointment to get to and I've got another coaching session to do. I would really like to continue this conversation, you know, maybe in a second or a little bit later on because I think it needs to be really explored so we can people buy the book, where can they find out about you and your blog and all the other work that you're doing that. Speaker 4: (31:49) So, so the book is published by element on one. I just hear from them that that wall are not fulfilling orders at the moment, but when it starts back up again, you can order it. Online. You just, you just Google the longest day met Kellman at all. They all know at links pop up, you can get it for Kindle on Amazon and for a reader on ebooks.com. Which was another instant way to be able to read it in the lockdown. A lot of people have done that yet. Speaker 3: (32:19) ebooks. And do you have a website met that you personally have? Speaker 4: (32:24) Yes, mattcalman.com so MA, T, T, C A L M A N . com l and he's a lengthier actually to to buy the book. And you sit on my photos. thats from my racing in falling out a client days, which Speaker 3: (32:40) Will continue. I wouldn't even, I had a certain one, one of those rice ones you haven't loved until you said. That's nice. Good. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom today. I really appreciate it. It's been an honor to have you on and to meet another fellow author, you know, doing, doing cool stuff in the world. So thank you very much for your time. Thanks so much. Been great. Speaker 1: (33:08) That's it this week for pushing the limits. Be sure to write, review, and share with your friends and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com.  

Shut the hell up. We've got a comedian here and she's really funny! Now shut the hell up! And with that crappy introduction I took to the stage. Sure everyone got quiet – because they were screamed at and ordered to. And now the pressure is on . . .I'd better be really funny. In fact, I'd better be funnier than the things they were just laughing about with their friends.   I get it that the guy was trying to get them focused. But screaming at the audience and telling 'em that they have to listen to me is NOT the way to get people in a laughing mood. My theme this week is introductions. And since it's the holidays so you'll be meeting a lot of new people. But even if it's not the holidays you should still make sure you're getting off on the right foot. You'll probably never have someone scream at others, but there are other factors that go into a successful introduction. Namely the environment that you're introduced in.   Try to control the environment of your introduction as much as you can. The screaming introduction took place in a loud bar, with a couple of sports games on the TVs, at a company holiday party. If I'd been asked, I probably would've told them to wait until the game was over and/or maybe had the guy go around individually and ask people to wrap up their conversation. Also flicking the lights is an oldy but goody. Screaming wasn't even one of the options I'd have brought up.   My tip: Pay attention to where your introductions are happening and try to control the environment as much as you can. You may have the opportunity to meet someone, but if it's not in a great situation that's going to put you in a favorable light, do yourself a favor and pass on it for the moment. That old saying that first impressions matter is true.   ACTION: : If you want to introduce me at your event, then check out my website www.TheWorkLady.com for my keynotes and comedy. I'd love to be there. . .as long as there's no screaming.   That's it for today. This is Jan . . . Take care and enjoy your journey.      

In today's episode, we're going to be talking about how to build your credibility as a business owner and entrepreneur.  I understand that in times gone by, your credibility was measured by the size of the shoulder pads in your jacket, but those days are gone. I absolutely adore talking about this topic. And I'm really excited about this podcast episode as well because it allows me to be talking about something that we see online, and we "kind of" think we need to do it and we're not 100% sure. And I have some very specific advice in this space.   More and more these days online, we hear about this need for credibility and creating "expert status" for yourself. We talk here about social proof and all of the things that help people to make a decision to invest with you. And people want to work with leaders. They want to work with experts. They want to work with people they trust and who are really credible. I totally understand that this can be something that we think is very important when we first start our business. But in today's episode, I want to actually talk about decreasing the need for projecting credibility and expert status and also creating a sense of expert credibility in an authentic, heart centred way. So first of all, let's talk about why we think we need to have this expert status or credibility. Why do people crave it? I find that, particularly for women in the online business world, it's because we don't want to have to sell ourselves. So we actually look to external validation in order to make us feel like we are a trusted source, we are an expert, we are valuable, we are worthy.  But by trying so hard to keep seeking out all of this expert status and proof of credibility, we are often devaluing what we are actually worth. We are devaluing what we have to offer. We are saying to ourselves, the universe, and potential customers and clients: “I'm only valuable and reliable and a valid source for you because I've got this expert status, because of something that's outside of me.” You might feel that same resistance to selling yourself, you might feel that same resistance to just standing in your power, and being yourself and saying: This is who I am and this is what I have to offer you. I understand why that feels like a real safety net to have that expert status, to have that external validation, to have that credibility, and to say, I've got the certificate, or I've got this or I've got that - I totally understand. And there are better ways that you can create that credibility. But I want us to cover that off at the end of this podcast episode, once we have actually reduced the need for it, after we recognize that our desire for that expert status or credibility is just a crutch. It's a sense that because this trusted source says “I'm good,” or because all of these people give you social proof that it means "I'm good." So we're going to actually reduce the need for it first, and then we're going to build your credibility and expert status in a heart centred, very authentic, very connected way. So first of all, let's reduce the need for it. All that I've just explained to you may have worked in the past.  For most people, after they've heard all that they think, "Oh my gosh, I'm totally trying to hide behind my 17 certificates." Or "Oh my gosh, I'm totally trying to use 45 testimonials in my webinars, because I don't want to say that I'm good. I want other people to say that I'm good." So even just knowing what's going on for yourself can often reduce that desire to have all of this external validation. People trust it less these days. You know yourself when you go to a sales page and you read the 25th testimonial, you're thinking to yourself, "Okay, I get it - other people like you, can we just move on? And can you just tell me what you're going to do? Can you just tell me what I'm going to get out of this? Can you just tell me what the value is of this?" Because that's what we really want to know when we are buying something, particularly when we're buying from a personal brand. We want to know that this person understands us, this person has something that can help us, this person is deeply committed to helping us get that outcome. And this person knows how to get us that outcome. We can get all of that reassurance and all of that information from you just speaking about what it is that you have to offer. We don't need to hear other people talking about you. And also, that external validation does not have as big an impact on our ability to decide whether you're good or not, whether you're going to have a good service or not, as a sense of connection to you. For example, when you go to a barbecue and you meet an electrician, and they say, "Oh, yeah, I'm an electrician." You don't then go and Google to find five other electricians. You don't ask them, "Do you have external references?"  No - You met that person, you've created a connection with them. Often you've met them through someone that you already know. And so that creates that initial connection, but you trust them because you've had a conversation with them. And you choose them because you've got a connection with them. Not because they tell you, "Oh, yes, Jen over here actually had some lights installed by me a few weeks ago. Would you like Jen to tell you how amazing my light installation was?" That's not why we make these choices! So we want to make sure that in our business, we're not actually costing ourselves sales by focusing so much on the external validation that we're not actually talking straight about our products and services. It's not as big of an impact as we think it is. Actually our connection strategies will help us create higher conversion and get the results we're looking for and make the sale wayyyy more than testimonials, social proof, trusted recommendations, being seen as an expert, 45 different certificates, or that “as seen in” bar across the bottom of your website that has 14 publications that are no longer in print. So how can we increase connection to get that conversion happening rather than increasing your social proof, external validation credibility, or expert status? Connect via humans! Humans love buying from humans. You now have ads for banks on television saying, when you call our call centre, you'll speak to a real live human being - that is a selling point. So if you are a human who is selling services to humans, guess what, you already have a competitive advantage. Just connect and be human, allow people to ask you questions. When I'm in the mood to buy something, I am much more swayed by the ability to type an email to someone and ask for some clarification on something and getting an answer from them than I am swayed by the 45 fake testimonials that they've got on the sales page. Allow people to connect with you, be human, show your human side, and you might just find that you get way more results than you ever will get with any of that external stuff. Get good at talking to your outcomes. Instead of relying on other people to tell your ideal clients that you're good at what you do, instead of relying on other people or certificates to speak for your work, learn to speak for your work well. Learn to speak about the outcomes that you are able to create for your ideal clients. Learn to speak about the value proposition of your products and services. Learn to speak about the transformation that you are facilitating. Because all of that time you're spending on getting that external stuff, if you were to invest that on really nailing your messaging and your value proposition, you'll get way faster results anyway. Be transparent. I find it so connecting and so engaging when someone says, "You know what, I haven't got all of that figured out. But I'm really good at this, and if you need this, this is what I'm going to help you with." Or people saying things like, "This is this is my first year in business." I actually find that I'm more drawn to people who are in start-up.  It might be because I love helping people in start-up and I love investing in working with people who are in start-up and helping them get their business moving really quickly. I'm very passionate about Women in Business, but often the things that you are hiding are actually part of your value proposition. For example, I was working with someone and she was in her early 20s, and she didn't have any photos of herself on her social media, or on her website. And when I asked her about getting some photos onto her socials and website, she said, "Oh, no, people are gonna judge me because I'm too young." She was worried that older people wouldn't buy from her because she thought they would perceive her as too young. And when we worked out who her ideal client was, it was actually women in their 20s and 30s. She wanted to work with young, vibrant, vivacious women. So the thing that she was trying to hide - her young age - was actually a value proposition in her work. I see this happen for a lot of people who say, "Oh, well, I'm not really qualified." They're trying to hide the fact that they're not necessarily qualified. But they actually could be highlighting that all of their abilities come from practical, grounded experience. So often the thing that we're trying to hide or the thing that we're worried about, or the thing that we don't really want to bring attention to is actually the full, transparent, authentic self. Another great example was when I was working with someone who has a chronic illness. And she said, "Well, I don't want to tell too many people about this illness, because then they might think that I'm going to be unreliable." But in talking about it we realized, "If your ideal clients also are dealing with a chronic illness or something that stops them from showing up fully, wouldn't it demonstrate to people that you deeply understand what's going on for them?"  If you start the relationship with people knowing your situation, then those people who choose to buy from you will be more understanding, and you'll be able to create safety nets and systems because you've been transparent about it. And once she started to embrace that, her business boomed. So connect to the human, talk to the outcome, and be more transparent in your business. Now, with all of that in mind, now that we've dialed down your need for this expert status and credibility, and dialed down your need for external validation, you can see that credibility doesn't come from externals, it comes from internals... So here are three things you can do that will give you that extra edge of credibility. Focusing And when I say focusing, I mean focusing on a very specific niche.  A. Very. Specific. Niche. When you focus down on a very specific niche, you are instantly telling people you specialize in solving this particular problem for this particular group of people. So by creating that focus, what you're actually doing is putting yourself in the specialist category, very quickly, almost instantaneously, just by choosing to focus. Consistency And this is a really interesting one because so many people struggle with consistency, particularly when they first start in their businesses. But actually, the number one driver of trust in a relationship is that I can accurately predict how you are going to behave. Let me say that again: The number one driver of trust in a relationship is that I can accurately predict how you're going to behave. So if you say "I put out a new video every Tuesday," and then you don't put a video out every Tuesday, you don't do what you say you're going to do, you are eroding the trust that you are creating with that audience. And that is derailing your credibility way faster than you can rebuild it up with expert testimonials. So be really mindful about how you can ensure consistency in your business. That includes consistency in delivering what you say you're going to deliver to your clients - when you tell clients that you'll do something for them by a particular deadline, you hit those deadlines and exceed them. When you say you're going to do something for someone, you actually do it, you show up consistently, you provide value consistently. You send your newsletter consistently.  All of those things actually give you way more credibility than a bunch of testimonials on your website. Pricing For so many women in business when they first start out, they price themselves so low that people see their prices and do a double take, like - Is this a trick? There must be something wrong with it. So by focusing on pricing that is appropriate, and consistently reviewing your pricing to ensure that it reflects the level of experience and qualification and the time that you've been in business, you can actually be insuring the credibility of your business as well. A lot of coaches have taken this message and run with it so far that they will say things like, "If you're charging under $3,000, you're wasting your time."  And I actually do not subscribe to that model. When you're first starting out in business, you need to charge a price point that feels really comfortable for you. Because the early phases of your business are when your confidence is the lowest, and your worries and wobbles are most likely to come to the fore.  And if you are also charging a huge price that you've never charged before, you have no idea if people will ever pay you for it, so when you don't make sales, it can create some really big wobbles for you. But something that I've seen happen that's even worse is: If someone gets convinced that they should be charging $3,000 or $5,000, and they put their price up from $1,000 to $4,000, and they make a sale - they're celebrating, they're going, Oh my god, this is so amazing. And then months pass before they make another sale. And they can't put their prices back down because someone has paid the full price. So then they start doing secret offers to people behind the scenes, or they're rocking in the fetal position in the corner because they don't know what to do – they’re stuck at an impasse. Because of that, I am a big fan of incremental price increases and consistently reviewing your prices. When I first started my business, I charged $97 for an hour. I'm now charging $2,000 for an hour, but I've gotten to that over incremental price increases over a period of time. And when I first started my business, it was very aggressive. It was consistent that I increased my prices as I developed my confidence and as demand for my products and services went up, and I was developing online courses and all sorts of things. But honestly, if I had jumped into it being $5,000 or nothing to work with me when I first started my business, I know that all the mindset stuff and all the money blocks that would have come up would have been very difficult for me to overcome. I also know that that predictability of income for me would have been so low that I wouldn't have been able to make some of the moves that I did in my business. Related to this, the higher you go with your prices when you're first starting out, the less people you're working with.  When I first started my business, I wanted to work with as many people as possible. I needed to practice, I needed to work out my processes. I wanted to understand people really deeply and understand what their challenges were, what wobbles they had, who did their homework, who didn't do their homework. I needed to work with a wide range of people within my very specific niche, so that I could get really clear, really calm and really confident. If I'd gone straight to the $5,000 or nothing model, I wouldn't have got all of the experience that I got in the first six months, and the first year, and the first two years of my business, which is now the foundation of this rock solid business that I have today. So yes, pricing does give a reflection of your experience and your expertise and your credibility. But I don't want you to drive yourself up to a price point that puts you in wobble mode, robs you of the opportunity to work with a bunch of clients and build your confidence, and achieving that real deep knowing within that you know your stuff, you can get the outcomes, and you are here to stay with a sustainable business.        

If I'd never.... Sexual Harassment seminar, victim shaming, Gaga 12/16/76, masked singer, my junk.

This week Jason spends some time looking at the indicators throughout his life that help reinforce his being trans. He also talks about how lessons learned along the way have changed the way he looks at the past, present, and future. We often say, "If I'd only known then what I know now!" and Jason does his best to explain what exactly that means for him and his transition. From boy clothes/toys/playmates to deeper existential coincidences, listen in to hear more about what has become more clear to Jason throughout this journey. #hindsight #growth #trans #transgender #reflecting Learn more: www.jasonsoules.com Follow Jason: www.instagram.com/soulesspeaks "Allow me to Trans-late" is brought to you by Whatever You Say Productions, LLC. www.wyspmedia.com --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/allow-me-to-translate/message

Dr. Hayes interviews Dr. Young about his time with CHOP and MOPP TRANSCRIPT   Disclaimer: The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. Dr. Hayes: Welcome to JCO's Cancer Stories, The Art of Oncology, brought to you by the ASCO Podcast Network, a collection of nine programs, covering a range of educational and scientific content, and offering enriching insight into the world of cancer care. You can find all of the shows, including this one, at podcast.asco.org. Welcome to Cancer Stories. I'm Dr. Daniel Hayes. I'm a medical oncologist and translational researcher at the University of Michigan, Rogel Cancer Center. And I've also had the pleasure of being past president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. I'm privileged to be your host for a series of podcast interviews with people I consider the founders of our field. Over the last 40 years, I've really been fortunate to have been trained and mentored and inspired by many of these pioneers. It's my hope that through these conversations we can all be equally inspired by gaining an appreciation of the courage, the vision, and also the scientific understanding that led these men and women to establish the field of clinical cancer care over the last 70 years. By understanding how we got to the present and what we now consider normal in oncology, we can also imagine and we can work together towards a better future for our patients and their families during and after cancer treatment. Today, my guest on this podcast is Dr. Robert Young. Among many designations he has, my favorite I think for Dr. Young is that he was considered one of the, quote, "gang of five," end of quote, I think self-named, who were responsible for developing the first curative chemotherapy regimen for Hodgkin's disease and non-Hodgkin's lymphomas at the National Cancer Institute in the early 1970s. Dr. Young is currently president of RCY Medicine, a private consulting firm based in Philadelphia. He was raised in Columbus, Ohio, where he couldn't get into the University of Michigan. So he went to a second-rate community college in Columbus called Ohio State. My bosses made me say it that way, Bob, here at the University of Michigan. Dr. Young: Not the correct way, The Ohio State University. Dr. Hayes: So he received his MD then at Cornell in 1965, followed by an internship at the New York Hospital. He spent the next two years as a clinical associate in the medicine branch at the National Cancer Institute. And then he completed his residency in medicine at Yale New Haven Medical Center. In 1970, he returned to the NCI, where he stayed for the next 18 years, serving during most of that as the chief of the medicine branch. Dr. Young accepted the role as president of the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia and served in that role and then chancellor in 2009. Dr. Young has authored over 400 peer reviewed papers regarding a broad range of both scientific and policy issues in oncology. But in addition to the I consider astonishing and precedent-setting reports of cures in Hodgkin's disease and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, perhaps most importantly with his longtime colleague and friend Dr. Robert Ozols, he led many of the early and groundbreaking studies in ovarian cancer diagnosis and treatment that I think still guide our care today for patients with this disease. He's won too many awards and honors for me to go through. But of the major ones, he won the prestigious Bristol-Myers Squibb award, which he shared with Dr. Ozols in 2002, the Margaret Foley Award for Leadership and Extraordinary Achievements in Cancer Research from the American Association of Cancer Research, and ASCO's Distinguished Service Award, one of our highest awards, for Scientific Leadership in 2004. Of note and close to my own heart, Bob served as the ASCO president 1989/1990, which I consider a really critical time in the evolution of our society. Dr. Young, welcome to our program. Dr. Young: Thank you. Dr. Hayes: So as I noted, you grew up in Columbus, Ohio, or again, as we say in Ann Arbor, that town down south, but more importantly that your father was a surgeon. And I've heard you tell the stories as a boy you went on rounds with him and that inspired it. Was he academic or was he a really community physician or both? Dr. Young: Well he was a little of both. He was primarily a community physician. But he did, particularly at the time of the Second World War, because he was a very skilled hand surgeon, he got involved with a lot of hand surgery related to a company called North American Aviation that produced a lot of World War II planes. And there were a lot of injuries in that setting. And so he became quite a skilled hand surgeon and actually taught at Ohio State's Medical Center. So he had both an academic and community-based practice. But primarily he was a practicing community surgeon. Dr. Hayes: And did you actually go into the OR with him as a boy? Dr. Young: Oh, yeah. Oh, sure. Dr. Hayes: Wow. Dr. Young: You know, in those days, there weren't any rules and regulations about that. And so I went in and watched surgery and held retractors and participated, you know, when I was a youngster. Dr. Hayes: Wow. What a privilege. You're right, that would not be allowed now. That's a good story. What did you see, bad and good, compared to medicine now then. I mean, if you had to say here are a couple things that we've lost that you regret. Dr. Young: Well, I think that it was more under the control of the physician than it is in this day and age in so many ways. For instance, my father practiced in three different hospitals. And he admitted patients depending upon what kind of surgical support and nursing support they needed. If they were complex, he went to a bigger hospital. If they were very straightforward cases, he put them into a smaller hospital. And so he had a lot more control over how his patients were dealt with and the circumstances under which they were cared for. And, of course, most of his practice was before Medicare and all of the insurance sort of thing, so that people paid what they could pay. And so it was a much simpler and much more physician-driven practice than it is today. Dr. Hayes: Just as an aside, there's a wonderful book called The Brothers Mayo, written by a woman named Clapesattle in the 1930s after both Charlie and Will died. And it's a history of the Mayo Clinic. But in it, she says that Will basically charged people what they could afford to pay. So if you were wealthy, he charged you a lot. And if you were poor, he gave it to you for free and everything in between. And he sort started made up the billing schedule the way he wanted it to happen. And one of his more wealthy patients challenged him on this, and he said, go somewhere else. Dr. Young: Yeah, well, that's exactly the kind of practice my father ran. Dr. Hayes: Yeah. Anyway, I'm intrigued by year two-year stint at the NCI in the late '60s before you then went back and finished at Yale. And hopefully this is not insulting and I know you're considered one of the so-called yellow berets. But tell me, tell us all about your choice to interrupt your residency and go to the NIH. I don't think our young listeners really understand the political climate and the circumstances of the time that led so many of you to go there. Dr. Young: Well, I think that's a great question, because it will lead to some of the other discussions we have later. But essentially, I graduated from medical school in 1965 at the height of the Vietnam War. And in those days, there was not only a general draft, there was a physicians draft. So graduating in medical school in those days, you had one of three choices. You could either take your chances-- and again, the numbers, your priority scores at the time, didn't really have anything to do with it, because they took as many doctors of whatever kind of type they wanted for whatever purpose they wanted. So that you couldn't be sure if you had a low number that you'd not be drafted. But you could take your chance. And in those days, a lot of people did. And a lot of people got drafted. Or you could join the Berry Plan, which was at the time an opportunity to continue your specialty training until you were finished. But then you owed back the military the number of years that you had been in specialty training. Or you could do a much less well-known track and that is with the US Public Health Service. And amongst the opportunities for the US Public Health Service were things like the Indian Health Service and the Coast Guard Service and those sorts of things, or the National Institutes of Health, about which at the time I knew almost nothing except that it existed. And I owe it to some of the folks that I worked with at Cornell, primarily a hematologist oncologist by the name of Dick Silver, Richard Silver, who's still at practice at New York Hospital, who when I was working in the labs there, because I was doing some research when I was at Cornell, and they were telling me about the fact that you could actually apply for a position at the NIH. And you would be in the US Public Health Service. So it took me about 3 milliseconds to figure out that for me that was clearly a track that I wanted to explore. And I had done some research in platelet function and platelet kinetics and so forth. And there was a guy by the Raphael Schulman who is at the NIH at the time. And I said, that would be a miracle if I could get this. So the way it worked was that you applied. And then you actually interviewed with a whole bunch of different people. And as it turned out, I didn't get a position with Dr. Schulman. But I was introduced to the National Cancer Institute and both the leukemia service and the then called the solid tumor service. And I applied to various things like that. And I actually got in on the leukemia service. So I walked in after I signed up and was taking care of little kids with acute leukemia, having never been a pediatrician or knowing anything about leukemia. But it was a baptism of fire and a very exciting place even then. Dr. Hayes: I want to get back to that in a second because that's a critical part of this. But, again, going back to the political climate, my opinion, this entire issue and your personal journey and many others had a profound effect on both the scientific and medical community of this country as a whole. I think it was an unintended effect. But because of the Vietnam War and because the NIH was such a great place to train in those days. Do you agree with me? Dr. Young: You are absolutely correct. I mean, one of the things that needs to be said is that this was a transformational phenomenon for cancer research. But it also took place in every other field. And the NIH at the time was just swarming with people of all medical disciplines who were coming to take advantage of the opportunities that existed within the NIH, but also to serve in this capacity as opposed to some of the alternatives that were around. And I think I heard a figure one time, which I'm sure is true, and that is at one point in time, 30% of the chairmen of medicine in the United States had done training at the NIH before they ended up being chairmen of medicine. So that gives you an idea of the impact of this. And you're absolutely right, it was a totally unintended consequence. Nobody ever designed it that way. Nobody ever planned for it to happen that way. But in retrospect, when looked at it and you can see exactly why what happened happened. Dr. Hayes: Yeah. And I interrupted you, but I did it on purpose, because it didn't sound to me like you really had a plan to go into cancer treatment, but sort of landed there serendipitously. Is that true? I mean how do you end up there? Dr. Young: Oh yeah, oh, yeah, I mean I did get very interested in hematology when I was in medical school. I first went to medical school, of course, thinking I was going to be a surgeon, because my father had a great practice and he had a wonderful experience with surgery and it was really cool. But I just found that I just wasn't designed just the same way. And it was increasingly clear that cancer was not my not my goal-- I mean, surgery was not my goal. And so, you know, I knew I wanted to stay in internal medicine. And I got interested in the research. And I had done some significant research and in platelet function, as I said. I knew that's what I wanted to do, some sort of clinically-related research in medicine. If I'd had my choices, of course, I would have gone into a sort of pure hematology track. And, of course, it's worth saying that it's difficult for oncologists nowadays to understand how big an outlier oncology was. There was no subspecialty in oncology at the time I went to train down there. There was a subspecialty in hematology. And, of course, all of us, the Gang of Five that you mentioned, all of us took hematology boards. And that's because it wasn't clear that there was going to be oncology. When oncology came along we all took the first oncology boards ever given. So that gives you an idea of how early in the history of oncology we were in the late '60s, early 1970s. Dr. Hayes: So we're talking 1970 or so right when you started? Dr. Young: Well, 1967 to '69, I was a clinical associate. Then I was at Yale for a year. And then in 1970, I came back on the senior staff. Dr. Hayes: And who were the characters above you when you came in? I know Doctors Frei and Freireich had been there before. Dr. Young: Yes. Frei and Freireich had just left the year before. One went off to MD Anderson, the other went off to the Memorial. And George and Vince-- George Cannellos, Vince DeVita-- had stayed on, with Vince as the head of the medicine branch. And then when we came back, Vince sort of brought two of us back that he'd had before, Bruce Chabner and I. He'd sort of sent us off to Yale and said they could buff us up a little bit. And he didn't offer us a job coming back. But we went off, and we were training up there. And he called us both up and says, why don't you to come back and join the senior staff. He recruited Phil Schein as well. And so that was the Gang of Five that we started out. Four of us ended up being president of ASCO at one time or another. And I suspect the only one who didn't, Bruce Chabner, probably would have except for the fact that he was the director of the Division of Cancer Treatment of the NCI for a long time. And the NCI and the NIH changed its attitude toward allowing people to participate in major leadership positions nationally, a tragedy as far as I'm concerned, which has I think affected the morale of the NIH and a lot of other things and deprived a lot of good people of opportunities to serve nationally. But that was the way it was, otherwise we would all ended up at some point leading-- Dr. Hayes: So the Gang of Five was you Bruce Chabner, George Cannellos, Phil Schein, and Vince DeVita, right? Dr. Young: Right, exactly. Dr. Hayes: And what were the dynamics among you? I mean, so were you and-- Dr. Young: Well, I mean, it was an incredible time. You know, there was enormous talent that had poured into the NIH, as we talked before. And an enormous amount of talent was present and was recruited in during this period of time. I mean, you know, Paul Carbone was still there. John Minna was recruited. Harman Ayer, who was the longtime chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society. Tom Waldman was a world class hematologist. Max Wicha was a part of this group. Sam Broder, Allen Lichter, an other ASCO president, Steve Rosenberg, Phil Pizzo was the head of the pediatric oncology branch, now dean at Stanford. And it goes on and on and on. And so there's a massive amount of talent and a lot of freedom. And so Vince was clearly the leader, he had a lot of ideas and a lot of creativity. But he let out a lot of people do whatever they wanted at the same time. And it was sort of a situation in which we all participated, because we were all attending at the same time. So Vince and George did a lot of the lymphoma and Hodgkin's disease stuff. We all participated. I got interested in ovarian cancer. And you talked about that. Bruce Chabner and Phil Schein were always very pharmacologically oriented. And so they did a lot of the phase 1 and phase 2 trials and a lot of the laboratory backup associated with the studies we did. And everybody shared. And so there was really not a lot of competition in that sense. Everybody was I think very competitive. Because it was all sort of shared, it worked out so that everybody felt that they were getting a substantial part of the recognition that was going on in the group. Another thing that was unusual about the NIH, but it had unintended, but important consequences is that nobody had anything to do with what they got paid. So that you could go to events and say, well, you know, I deserve to be paid more, but it didn't have anything to do with what you got paid. We had no control over anybody's salary. So that I don't think the whole time I was there, the whole 14 years I was chief of the medicine branch, I don't think I ever had a conversation with anybody about money, because I didn't have anything to do with what people got paid. Let me tell you, that's a big change. It actually has a remarkable, remarkable effect on the way people work. Because if for some reason somebody wanted to make more money, they just had to leave. There wasn't any way to do it. So you either had to accept that this is what everybody got paid and that you were rewarded by the opportunities to do the kinds of research that were done. Or you said, look, I need to go on and go somewhere else. Dr. Hayes: Now, just between you and me, and maybe a few thousand other people who are listening to this, who is the first guy to say let's give combination chemotherapy to Hodgkin's disease? Dr. Young: Well, actually, I don't know the answer to that. I think if I had to guess, I would say Vince, because Vince and George had been around in the Frei and Freireich days. And of course, you know, they'd already had experience with the impact of combination chemotherapy in leukemia. And so the concept was you took drugs that were active in the disease and put them together if they had different kinds of toxicity. And you were then able to utilize the combined impact on the tumor and sort of spread around the toxicity. So it was more tolerable. And that was the concept. And I think that because Vince and George were treating chronic leukemias and treating Hodgkin's disease, the notion of combining it with combinations was pretty straightforward evolution from the experience in leukemia. There are other people who claim that. I think from time to time both Jay Freireich and Tom Frei have claimed it. I think that there was a dust up between Vince and Paul Carbone and George because there was some suggestion by somebody that Paul was the one who originated the idea or Gordon Zubrod. And quite frankly, I don't know. If I knew, I would tell you. But I don't actually know. I can tell you this, that the emotional and passionate driver of the concept of combination chemotherapy as a successful modality in Hodgkin's disease and lymphoma was Vincent. Dr. Hayes: Your answer is very consistent with what other people have said the same thing. It must have been somewhere along the line that all of you began to see that there really were cures. And did you realize, as a group, that you were making history? Or was it just day to day-- Dr. Young: Well, you know, it's interesting. I can tell you one of the most transformational experiences that I had in the early days is, of course, we were following all these patients who had started on MOP. And so to do that you had to sort of go back and pull out the charts and all this kind of stuff. You know, we didn't have electronic systems that had all the stuff recorded. You just had to go down and pull off the charts. And what struck me so tremendously was the attitude of the physicians that had first started some of these patients on this therapy, because the notes made it very clear that they were sort of flabbergasted when these people came back after the first couple of months and they were watching their disease disappear, and that they really didn't anticipate at all, initially, that they were going to see these people after a couple of weeks. And it was very clear in the notes. By the time we had gotten there, of course, there were a significant number of people already on the trial. And it was already clear that we were seeing things that nobody had ever seen before. And I think that's when it first began to dawn on everybody. And as soon as we saw it in Hodgkin's disease based on the experience that we'd seen with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, we had a suspicion that it would likely be the case as well there. Dr. Hayes: So you already bounced across it, but as I was looking through your CV I knew this anyway, you really mentored a who's who of oncology-- Rich Schilsky, Dan Longo, Max Whishaw, Dan Van Hoff-- and you noted already that oncology training has evolved. I mean BJ Kennedy pushed through boards I think in '74 or '75, something around there. What have you seen in the evolution on oncology training that you think is good or bad? Dr. Young: Oh, I think in general, it's much better. And I think it's much better because, of course, there's a lot of success that's been built into what's been accomplished. And that makes it a lot easier to teach people about how to treat Hodgkin's disease well, than we ever could at the time we were doing it because nobody knew the answer to those things. And I think there's also a lot more of it. You know, I think at the time we were at the NIH, you know, I think credibly you could count on both hands the number of really established academic oncology programs in the United States. And now, there are probably 100. And so the quality of training and the quality of mentoring is dramatically better than it was in those days. In those days, you know, hematologist we're doing most of the treatment of cancers. And they were all sort of in the Sidney Farber mode. You take one drug, and you give it as long as it works. And then you switch to another drug and use that as long as it works. And that was pretty much the way hematologists approached the disease. And by all means, you don't cause any toxicity. Dr. Hayes: I picked up several adults who had been Sidney Farber's patient when I was at the Dana-- Sidney Farber Cancer Institute in those days in the early '80s. So I had his handwritten notes. And sadly, I did not photocopy them. I would have love to have had it. But he had a very different mindset in terms of the way-- Dr. Young: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And as far as I can tell, this is just my own personal reaction, is that I don't think either George or Vince at the time we got here shared any of that attitude. George is a little more cautious than Vince, as everybody knows. But neither one of them for a minute ever suggested that we were being too aggressive, that it was unfair and immoral to treat people with these kinds of toxicities, not that they desired to make people sick. But they were absolutely convinced that aggressive therapy could make a dramatic difference in the natural history of these diseases. Dr. Hayes: Yeah, certainly, Dr. Frei felt that way too. Dr. Young: Yes. And well, they were his mentors. I mean, you know, all these guys were there at the same time. And they were all influencing one another. Dr. Hayes: You know, it's amazing, I think all of us-- there are 44,000 members of ASCO now-- basically are derived from about 10 people in the 1950s and '60s, most of the DNA, not completely-- Karnofsky and some others around, but-- Dr. Young: Oh, yeah. Dr. Hayes: Well, the other thing is actually, you were talking about the safety, what are the war stories? I mean, how did you give chemotherapy? Were you guys mixing it up and giving it yourself? You know, we got all these bells and whistles. Dr. Young: Well, I mean, for instance, you know this is the first time really protocols were written. And the reason that we wrote protocols was simply because we were working with fellows. And they literally needed the recipe of what it was they were supposed to give and when. And so we wrote up these what were the first of the clinical trial protocols. There was no formal informed consent at the time of these studies. We had, of course, informed consent, the same way you do informed consent now, really. And that is you talk to the patient. You explain to the patient what the treatment is and what your expectations for the treatment are. And the patient understands the disease they face and decide that they can do it or not do it. And it's actually still the same today. The only difference is we now have 14, 17-page informed consent documents that make lawyers happy, but don't really impact, at least in my view, whether patients decide to participate or not. But we didn't have those. So I think that was the other one of the great things about the setting at the NIH, not that I'm anti-informed consent, but it was simpler. It was easier to get something done. You could do unconventional treatment and nobody looked at you and said, "you can't do that, that's never been done before, you're not allowed to do that." We didn't have academic constraints. One of the things that always surprised me is when, you know, we would develop a particular technique, like peritoneoscopy or laparoscopy for ovarian cancer staging, and when guys left the program having been well-trained to do this, they couldn't do it when they went to their new institutions because gastroenterologists did this. That was the sort of thing that the constraint wasn't here. There were also very easy-- I mean, all you had to do was to get an idea and write it up. I took a look at ovarian cancer and said, you know, "It seems to me, here's a disease that's now being managed by gynecologic oncologist. Internists never see these patients. They're all treated with the melphalan. And those that happen to live a long time develop acute leukemia from that treatment. They ought to be something better than what we're doing." And so we just decided that we would begin to take patients with advanced ovarian cancer into the NIH. And the rest sort of is history. But you couldn't do that in another hospital. You know, the biggest treaters of ovarian cancer probably program-wise was MD Anderson. But all his patients were treated by gynecologic oncologists. You couldn't have gone into the MD Anderson and said, "OK, we're going to take over the treatment of advanced ovarian cancer." They would have laughed in your face. Dr. Hayes: Actually, you just segued into my next question. And again, you and Dr. Ozols, in my opinion, completely changed the course of ovarian cancer treatment. Did you get a lot of pushback from the gynecologic community? Dr. Young: Well, no, actually. It's interesting. Now I don't know what we got behind the lines, you know when they were all sitting around the bar after the meetings. We really didn't. First of all, one of the other advantages of being at the NIH is that when you said something, people listened. And the other thing is, of course, when we got really going with ovarian cancer-- this was after the passage of the National Cancer Act-- and there was money at the NIH. So one of the things we did, for instance, was to put on a series of symposia about ovarian cancer treatment, what was going on, what wasn't going on, and brought the movers and shakers of this field together in meetings and talked about what was being done and what should be done and what information we didn't have that we needed. And we actually got funded for a period of time, a group called the Ovarian Cancer Study Group, which eventually evolved into the Gynecologic Oncology Cooperative Group, National Cooperative Group. So we had some other tools that we could bring to bear to drum up an interest in new research in ovarian cancer. And, of course, gynecologic oncologists couldn't prevent us from taking patients that were referred to us. And our surgeons, for instance, none of whom were gynecologic oncologists, were happy to help and to operate on them when they needed to be operated on. And Steve Rosenberg's group has fantastic surgeons. So we didn't have any problem getting state of the art surgery done on these people. And, in fact, they are general surgeons learned some gynecologic oncology at the same time. Dr. Hayes: Yeah, you know, it's been interesting to me that the surgeons, the general surgeons, willingly gave a systemic therapy. But that still in this country, there are very few medical oncologist who do GYN oncology. It's still mostly done by GYN oncologists. Dr. Young: Yes. Dr. Hayes: And there are very few trained medical oncologist in this. And I think it's gotten too complicated for a surgeon to do both. I don't really see why that hasn't happened based on, especially your model and Bob's model, that's my own soapbox. Dr. Young: Yeah, that's an interesting point, because at the NIH, when we were there, Steve Rosenberg and Eli Gladstein in radiation therapy, there were no rules that said that they couldn't do chemotherapy. And, in fact, they did it sometimes. And we didn't say anything about it. Usually, they called on us and said, hey, look, you know, we need you to help us or participate with us or whatever. But there were no rules that said that they couldn't. And sometimes they did. But for the most part they said, "look, this is not the business we're in. We want you guys to do the chemotherapy." And so for the most part we were able to do that. Dr. Hayes: The entire NSABP, those guys were all given their own surgery, their own chemotherapy. And they ultimately handed most of it over to medical oncology through the years. But that's not happened so much in GYN. OK, I want to go into your role in ASCO at the end here. And as I noted, I think you were president during a really critical turning point for the society. And just a few things, you already mentioned that I think you were already at Fox Chase when you ran. So you'd left NCI. And what made you run? But more importantly, tell us about your role in the evolution at that time of the society. Dr. Young: I think actually they recruited me to run just at the time that I was looking to leave. And so I left in December of 1988. And I was president of ASCO 1989 to 1990. At the time, I had moved from the medicine branch and ran the cancer center's program for a year. And I decided that I liked it. I thought, well, maybe I'll just stay here for the rest of my life, the way Steve Rosenberg did and others have done very successfully. But I said, well, you know, it's either sort of now or never. And so I decided that I would make the jump. But when I got into the sort of ladder, if you will, of ASCO through the board and so forth, it became clear that there were a couple of things that were a real challenge for the society. The society had at the time for the most part been essentially run on contract, that there was no organization of ASCO at all. It was it was all run by a contract organization. And it was clear that we had grown to a size such that we really needed to begin to recruit our own leadership staff. And so my year as president was actually the first year we hired a full-time employee. And she was based in a law firm that we used for ASCO legal business. But that was the first employee ever hired by ASCO. And that was in 1990, or 1989, I don't remember which, put in that year anyway. The other thing that was going on, which was critical for the society, is that, of course, there's always been a 'town gown' challenge in all aspects of medicine. And medical oncology was no different. So it had originally been the province of academic oncologists. But the numbers began to change dramatically. And it became clear that there was an enormous number of community-based oncologists, who looked at the challenges that face the organization somewhat differently than the academics. And this is one of the things that I think I benefited from growing up with a father that had both his feet in the community-based practice and the academic practice. And I realized how private practicing physicians view academics and view academic control of organizations. And I realized-- and others did too. I wasn't alone on this-- that we really needed to build up the recognition of community-based oncology as a first class citizen in the society. And so we began to create and bring in all of these state society organizations. And we began to get leadership roles who were based in community oncology, rather than just academics. And Joe Bailes was our first head of the Public Relations Committee of the society and grew this into a national presence and became the first community-based president of ASCO. So I think I think those are the two things that I saw that hopefully I made an impact on. And it always amazes me to realize that the society was really that young. I mean, people can't believe that it's just, what, 30 years ago when we had our first employee. Dr. Hayes: Yeah, that's why I'm doing these podcasts. We make sure we get this history. You know, it's interesting, I often give you credit for the ladder. As president myself, it was made very clear to me that 90% of the patients in this country with cancer are treated by community oncologists, maybe 85% or so. And about 2/3 of our membership are community oncologists. So we now have designated seats on the board of directors. We started a Department of Clinical Affairs that Steve Grubbs is running. That's just a few years old. But, boy, it's been fabulous. We now have a designated chair, the state affiliate council is invited to the board of directors and sits in and presents. And the state affiliate councils meets at ASCO headquarters at least once a year. And we've had a couple presidents who are, besides Joe, Doug Blayney and Skip Burris now coming in in June. So I think we've been reaching out. It always struck me when I sat in the headquarters, the seven founding members were, for the most part, community people. They met just to talk about how do you give chemotherapy. It wasn't, you know, about Tom Frei or Freireich or Jim Holland. It was folks in the community. And then it grew into an academic society. And I think you and then Joe Bailes and others kind of brought us back and grounded us. And to me, that's a really critical evolution in our society. I think it's made us much stronger. So those are most of my questions. You've answered almost everything I had written down that I always wanted to ask you if I got a moment in a cab with you. I want to thank you for taking time to do this. But more importantly, I want to thank you for all the contributions you have made to the field. I mean, I don't think I would be here and I don't think most of us who do oncology would be here if it weren't for you and the Gang of Five and the things you've done, both by the courage to moving forward to giving the kinds of chemotherapy and stuff, establishing science in the field, but also the policy stuff. Your articles in The New England Journal over the years, I think have been classics. You should put this all in a book and send them out to everybody because they have to do with not just giving chemotherapy, but the whys and hows of what we do. So I know I'm being long-winded, but that's because I'm a big fan. Well, thank you very much. Dr. Young: You know one of the things, I got to say is that I've just been a very lucky person. I happened to have had great opportunities. And I think I was able to take advantage of those opportunities. But somebody gave me those opportunities and put me at the right place at the right time. And so I am a very lucky guy. Dr. Hayes: Well, and I want to finish up and say how nice it is to see at least one graduate of Ohio State University do well. You know, it doesn't come very often. So congrat-- Dr. Young: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah The team up north, the team that will not be named, yes. Dr. Hayes: Thank you so much. And appreciate all you've done. Again, appreciate your taking time with us. Dr. Young: Thank you very much, Dan. Dr. Hayes: Until next time, thank you for listening to this JCO's Cancer Stories, The Art of Oncology podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard today, don't forget to give us a rating or review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listened. While you're there, be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. JCO's Cancer Stories, The Art of Oncology podcast is just one ASCO's many podcasts. You can find all the shows at podcast.asco.org.

“I don't know if I would define it as a mission statement, but we're very clear that the reason my business exists is to alleviate suffering and amplify joy. That's it.” -Danielle LaPorte   WORK WITH EMILY iheartmylifebooking.com E-mail: info@iheartmylife.com   ABOUT OUR GUEST Danielle LaPorte is the creator of the Desire Map series, a heart-centered approach to finding your true power. The book has been translated into 10 languages, a day planner system, a multimedia course, a top 10 iTunes app and workshop and coaching programs with leaders and over 15 countries. She's a member of Oprah’s Super Soul 100 a group who, in Oprah Winfrey's words, is uniquely connecting the world together with a spiritual energy that matters.   Connect with Danielle LaPorte https://www.daniellelaporte.com/ https://www.daniellelaporte.com/heartcentered   DURING THIS EPISODE Danielle LaPorte is someone who I admire greatly, who's had a huge impact in my own life and journey. She's someone I now call a friend, a mentor, and just an inspirer in every sense of the word. Today's episode is really special to me. We go super deep with Danielle's own journey through suffering into joy and how she was able to create her beautiful online business. “If I'd asked people what they wanted, they would have told me they wanted a faster horse.” - Henry Ford Danielle follows her intuition to create products that she knows people need. She walks us through the pivot that she took going from a full coaching practice into products and more books and doing things differently on her own terms. We also dive into Danielle’s approach to inclusive manifesting. She’s encouraging us to consider how our success is actually going to help other people and lift people up with us. So if you're looking for some inspiration, permission to follow your own heart, and a guide for living life and doing things in a way that feels good, this episode's for you.   BE DARING. BE DIFFERENT. BE FIRST. Danielle was taught early on to “Be Daring. Be Different. Be First.” She learned this lesson in one of her first jobs, working with Anita Roddick. If you want to be first, you have to be courageous and believe in your own originality. Be willing to bring your unique lens and your authentic story. Don’t inflate your success. Just tell people where you’re at in your journey and be willing to serve.   KNOWING WHEN TO PIVOT Danielle has learned to follow her intuition and recognize the signs when it’s time for a pivot. We talk about the difference between pivoting from fear versus pivoting to expand. Did you know you can actually feel the difference in your body? Danielle shared these questions from Eckhart Tolle that she used as a guide when she felt she wanted to shift how she was working with clients: Are you enthusiastic about it? Can you enjoy it? Can you accept it? She has pivoted her work to the point now that everything she does is sending a message of consciousness.   WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to recognize when you should consider a pivot The questions you need to be asking when considering a project or pivot How to learn to trust your intuition Why you shouldn’t get attached to your formulas and gimmicks What you need to become a superhero   ABOUT THE I HEART MY LIFE SHOW Tune into the I Heart My Life Show with Success Coach Emily Williams to learn how to design a life you love, manifest more success and wealth, move past fear and blocks and create joy in your life and business. Emily and her world-renowned guests will help you create a life that’s better than your dreams and give you tangible action steps to get there — quickly. She’ll cut through the fluff and share what’s worked for her and the world’s most successful people. She believes that success is an inside job — not just about another strategy. The I Heart My Life Show will help you finally heart your life, experience extraordinary success, make more money, live according to your own desires and give you permission to go after what you really want.   SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i-heart-my-life-show/id1330534524 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/1Zw6fI37FrfVjZMXlMiZZ6   CONNECT WITH EMILY https://www.iheartmylife.com/ https://www.instagram.com/iheartmylifenow/ https://www.facebook.com/iheartmylifenow https://www.linkedin.com/company/i-heart-my-life/ Email: info@iheartmylife.com   LEARN MORE ABOUT EMILY More about Emily, her company I Heart My Life and her coaching programs can be found at www.iheartmylife.com. Emily Williams is a success coach, entrepreneur, and author with a seven-figure business who, at one point, couldn’t get a job at Starbucks. After experiencing a quarter-life crisis, she moved from Ohio to London (where she knew no one!) and in 2014 launched her business, I Heart My Life. She made $442 in her first month—and then went on to hit six figures in six months, before her 30th birthday. She grew it to seven figures in under 18 months. Today, she works with female entrepreneurs all over the world, helping them bust through the obstacles that hold their dreams and goals hostage so they can free themselves to live the lives they want, build their own online business and hit their money goals. She’s been featured in Money, Entrepreneur, Business Insider, Forbes and Success Magazine.    

Stories in this episode: Ken’s professional future is uncertain until a unique series of dreams leads him down the right path; A challenging move to Fiji and a brush with dengue fever leave Craig and his young family desperate for a message from Heaven;. After the death of her colleague’s son, Emily receives a unique message of hope for her grieving coworker. This Episode of This Is The Gospel is sponsored by LIGHT THE WORLD. Join us as we #LightTheWorld this Christmas and sign up to get daily service prompts through text message or email. Text the word “LIGHT” to the number: 71234 or visit LighttheWorld.org. That's also where you'll find "The Christ Child", a brand new short film that New Testament scholars are calling the most historically accurate depiction of the Nativity ever filmed.  SHOW NOTES To see pictures, and find links to things mentioned in this episode, go here. To find out more about the themes we're developing for upcoming episodes, follow us @thisisthegospel_podcast on Instagram and Facebook :) TRANSCRIPT KaRyn Lay  0:05   Welcome to "This Is the Gospel," an LDS Living podcast where we feature real stories from real people who are practicing and living their faith every day. I'm your host, KaRyn Lay and if you can't tell, I have a cold. But don't worry, you can catch it through the podcast so I think we're safe. And I hope you can still understand me. I'm not exactly sure where I got the dream book, probably in the discount section of Barnes and Noble where I got almost all of the books that were not textbooks in college. Or maybe it was a gift. But wherever it came from, it was a hit at parties. Someone would just mention the word dream in casual conversation and I'd immediately run to the shelves and come back armed with this book that was somewhere between a dictionary and a comic book. I think it was even called "The Dictionary of Dreams." So anyway, I'd have the person tell me all the specifics of their dream, every little detail, and then I would look up every symbol so that we could try to interpret the dream together. Did you dream your teeth were falling out? Well, according to the book on page 72, you are feeling insecure about some aspect of your life. There was a chicken in your dream? Page 193 says that something new and exciting is coming around the corner. Abraham Lincoln showed up fighting vampires in your last dream? You have a strong and honest character, or you don't and you need to clean something up. Like I said, hours and hours of party fun. Now I know what you're thinking, "Wow, I really want to come to one of KaRyn's riveting parties." But maybe you're thinking, "That's a load of psychobabble," as my dad would call it. And I have to agree on some level. As hokey as all of this dream stuff might sound, there is definitely precedent for dreams and their interpretation making an appearance as an important tool for revelation of truth. Lehi's dream ring any bells? Well, today we've got three stories about the way God sometimes uses our dreams to talk with us as we navigate our way through discipleship.    Our first story comes from Ken, whose experience with two revelatory dreams in his life helped to guide him in his career in two very different directions. Here's Ken.   Ken Alford  2:13   In the fall of 1978, I was wearing an ROTC uniform to the first day of class at Brigham Young University. It was a political science class, I still remember the classroom. And just as the class was ready to begin, we had no professor in the room. And the professor came running into class just seconds before the class began, had a big stack of books, dropped it on the desk, and we all expected he was going to begin class. Instead, he looked around the room, he zeroed in on my army cadet uniform and ran up to my desk and said, "It's just so good to see a uniform."  And so I said, "Well, why would you say that?"  And he said, "Well, I just retired, after 30 years, serving the country in the United States Army and now I'm a professor here at BYU."  And so I asked what was probably the dumbest question I could have asked. I said, "You can do that?" Well, obviously you could do that because he had done it. But he was very patient. He said, "Yes, I, I just retired just a week or two ago. And now I'm teaching here." And in the back of my head, I could hear the spirit say, "If you do it right, you can do this too." And that day in 1978, the seed was planted to come back and be a faculty member at Brigham Young University. So after that experience in that classroom, I finished my senior year, along the way got engaged to the cutest girl at the school, and she became my wife. That actually was quite a week. On Thursday, graduation week, I was commissioned in the army by my father. The following day, I graduated from Brigham Young University. Then five days later, I married my sweetheart over the altar in the Salt Lake temple. And then the following day, we left for Fort Harrison in Indianapolis and that began kind of a whirlwind experience in the army.  I had a very unusual military career. I never served in a division. I had the opportunity in my career to do lots of educational things. First, the army sent me for a master's degree. And then I taught computer science at West Point for four years. And then I had the opportunity after working in the Pentagon, to reapply to West Point and I was selected again, this time for a Ph.D. in computer science. And then I went back to West Point for four years. But while I was doing my Ph.D. program, I was kind of, quite frankly, a fish out of water because I had a political science background as an undergraduate. I had a Master's at that point, but I hadn't done anything really advanced in computer science. My Ph.D. dissertation was on large scale databases, and they had given me three years to finish what's—the average in our program was four and a half to five years—and they gave me the loving advice "Be dead or be done." And I decided I would rather be done than be dead so I was going to finish in three years. But what that meant was that you had to do your dissertation research in a very compressed manner. And at that time, large-scale database search engines, Google was brand new, they were on the cusp of what was happening and we were all trying to figure this out together. And so I reached a point in my research where I was kind of stuck. Because in the sciences and computer science included, you have to advance the field in order to get your Ph.D. You just can't report what others have done. I went up to talk to research lab personnel and other Ph.D.'s and they said, "Yeah, you're kind of stuck." And what happened was in December in January of 1999, and then into the winter of 2000, over a period of about three weeks, I had the most amazing experience. I would dream—it wasn't every night but it was most nights—I would dream the next portion of my research and my dissertation. And I would wake up in the morning and it had been handed to me. And I would get up and write it down and it would work!  One of the problems that I had was trying to figure out how to load quickly such large amounts of data. And the answer just came in a dream and I did it and it worked and it ran in just a fraction of the time of what I'd been doing. And it's cut weeks off my research, and it came from a dream. Other times, I would wake up and I knew exactly what to write, I knew exactly how to approach the problem. And it was just day after day after day, and it got to the point where it was exciting to go to bed because I couldn't wait to see what the next part of my dissertation was going to be. And then, as soon as I reached the point where I was kind of over the hurdle and now just needed to write it up, it stopped. It just stopped. It was just—I don't know what else call it—it was just a tender mercy. But it came at the exact right time, in the exact right amount. If I'd gotten the whole thing in one night, I would have been frustrated, I couldn't have remembered. But it became in just these doses that were perfect to help me finish my Ph.D. And I finished on time and went to West Point and taught as a Ph.D. professor. And I was not dead. The experience I had over that series of weeks, and from my perspective, it was just truly miraculous, it was just a wonderful, wonderful time. And exciting to see what was coming next because I was just sometimes as surprised as anyone else. And I remember my advisory Professor kept saying, "Where'd you get this from?" And I really didn't know how to answer the question. I couldn't say, "Well, I dreamed it last night." But it was one more confirmation kind of along the way that the thought I'd had, the impression I'd received in 1978, that If I do it right, I can return to BYU one day, was just kind of confirmed along the way.  So I was able to finish my Ph.D. on time. And really, quite honestly against all odds as my dissertation chair kept telling me, and then we went to West Point just a few weeks later and began four wonderful years there. Fast forward, in 2006, I went into the kitchen in our home in Virginia, and there was a Michael Buble, a song called "Home." And my wife and I started dancing in the kitchen. And I just turned to her at the end of that song after one of the lines and I said, "It's time." And she said, "It's time." It's time for us to start thinking about what's next. And so that's when we turned and began looking at applying to BYU to see if what had happened in 1978 we could bring it to fruition. Throughout my career, especially in Virginia, Brigham Young University used to send out to recruiters and they would talk about what you have to have to even apply to teach at BYU. And so I went to several of those meetings before I had my masters or before I had my Ph.D., and learned what the requirements were. And so I just kind of made sure I did all of those. I don't know if the folks in the church history and doctrine department had planned on having that requirement filled with a computer science degree who had published on databases and taught at the Military Academy, but it met the requirements of the law. 30 years as a full military career, I was approaching the 30-year mark. And it's a fairly traumatic thing when it's time to leave that military environment. It's similar, in many ways, to the kind of environment that the church provides, people just as wonderful I will say. There was never an opportunity in my entire career where the military ever tried to place me in a position where I had to consider whether or not I would compromise any of our values, or break the word of wisdom or anything else connected with the church. I worked with just a wonderful group of people.  But in the back of my mind, I wanted to pursue the opportunity with Brigham Young University. And so I had applied to teach religion. I had been teaching institute and seminary as a volunteer for over 20 years and wanted to do something different in retirement other than leadership or computer science. And what had happened is I was kind of in a box that I really didn't see the way out of because of timing. Brigham Young University is a wonderful place and has wonderful things. But one of the things it does very slowly is hiring. I've heard them described as glacial. So what was happening is I would not hear from Brigham Young University whether or not I had been hired until the window would have closed for me to submit my retirement papers in time to begin the fall semester at Brigham Young University should I actually be hired. We were trying to decide what to do. It was a matter of our daily prayer, my sweetheart and I were asking the Lord, you know, what's the way forward? What's the way out of this? So I went to bed, and in the dreams of the night, and it's just as vivid today as when I had the dream—the details of this dream are just so vivid. I found myself viewing a meeting. It was in a small office, there were several individuals seated around a small little table and they were in the process I could see of counting votes. And so I listened in, I recognized two of the people in the room and knew exactly who they were. And they were counting votes and discussing a vote that had just taken place among the faculty. And I soon, very quickly realized that I was watching the hiring meeting where the faculty had voted on whether or not would be selected as the next faculty member. And the votes were tallied. And at the end of the meeting, the department chair said, "Well, then it's agreed. We will send forward Ken Alford's name to fill this position that we're looking for on the faculty." And they went around the room and everyone concurred with that decision. And then the meeting ended.  When I woke up, I recognized that that dream was just different. There was just a spiritual nature about it. And I was just absolutely comfortable that the time was now that I was to go ahead and "drop papers" as the army slang is, that I was to drop my retirement papers and to move forward in faith. Even though I hadn't heard from Brigham Young University yet that I was hired, I had absolutely no fear at all whatsoever. I talked with my wife, I said, here's what happened. She felt very good about it as well. And she said, "Are we going to do it?" I said, "We're going to do it." And about two days later, I turned in my papers and then several weeks later, it was actually about two months later, I got the call from the department chair. He confirmed what I had seen in the dream and I was hired to be a professor in church history and doctrine at Brigham Young University, in many ways, against all odds.  From the time we arrived and kind of signed in to the university, it's just felt like home. That was just so wonderful. And then after I arrived at Brigham Young University, several years later, someone just mentioned, just off the cuff, "Oh well I was on the hiring committee at the time you were hired." And it was one of the individuals that I had recognized in my dream. The other individual, I recognized, the department chair at the time, and when I saw the room where the meeting was held, I recognized the room from my dream. I recognize that these revelatory dreams that I'd been blessed with—and they're really a rare event. I'm in my mid-60s and it's happened a couple of times in my total life. But I recognize, I just see them as just tender mercies, just kindness that they came in times when I'd reached a point where I needed outside help. I needed information I didn't have or I needed an understanding that I didn't have. It's just so wonderful and reassuring to know that Heavenly Father knows who I am, He knows what I need, and He's just so willing to help. The revelatory dreams I've shared here that happened with my dissertation, and then also to know that it was okay to go ahead and retire and leave the army at that point. They all, even at the time, they just kind of seemed to fit with the thoughts that have been placed in my head and 1978. It just seemed to be kind of like the next piece and I was just getting a little nudge and it was just really fun to be on the receiving end.   KaRyn Lay  15:15   That was Ken Alford. Ken is one of the authors of a new book called "Dreams As Revelation." And he, along with Craig Mansell, whom we're going to hear from next and Mary Jane Widger have spent years researching and seeking to understand the nature of our dreams from a spiritual perspective. After he was done telling his story, I asked Ken a few questions about how dreams work in real life.  So, Ken, I have this reoccurring dream and it's where I'm in a station wagon. I'm in the front seat, but you know how they used to have those benches in the old station wagon?  Ken Alford  15:46   That face backward? KaRyn Lay  15:47   Yeah. So I'm in the front seat, but there's no seat belt and I'm in the middle and there are no pedals. And I can't stop it and it's going over a cliff. So, that's not revelatory, right?  Ken Alford  15:58   I think not. KaRyn Lay  15:59   Okay, okay, that gives me some peace. Actually, I don't think I've ever had a dream that is revelatory. I think God speaks to me in a totally different way. As the author of this book, you've done tons of research about dreams as a revelatory tool. What would you say to someone like me who's never had a dream that we can count as revelation? Ken Alford  16:19   While researching this book, we learned very quickly that revelatory dreams are the exception and not the rule. And not everyone has them and that's okay. God speaks to us each individually in many different ways. And some people seem to be more prone to these, that God can speak to them this way. Other people have other ways of receiving information from the Holy Ghost. And it's an individual matter and there's nothing wrong with anyone if they haven't had these. And in fact, quite frankly, those who do have them, when they look at it objectively they're very rare. This is a very rare event over the course of your life. KaRyn Lay  16:58   Yeah, because you said you'd had them a couple of times—smaller ones—before that dissertation "Bonanza," I don't know what else to call it. And then the big dream that helped you to know to "drop your papers" before you knew what was coming next. Ken Alford  17:15   Very briefly, it's kinda like this. We think of the Apostle Paul as a visionary man and we talked about Paul's visions, the road to Damascus. But when you look at Paul's life, it is a very rare event, even in someone who is considered a visionary. Or Joseph Smith, we consider him as being so visionary, but if you look, most days are not attended by angels, most days are not accompanied by visions. And it's absolutely the same situation for even people that do experience occasional revelatory dreams. They are a rare and unique and wonderful opportunity, but they are not the only way God surely communicates with man. KaRyn Lay  17:54   So what would your advice be to somebody who does have one of these dreams? Ken Alford  17:59   First, I would just caution that you listen to the spirit to see if this is a revelatory dream. Because we don't want to convince ourselves that something that's occurred is something that it's not. It's also important to recognize that revelatory dreams fit within your stewardship. You won't receive dreams to direct others, you won't receive dreams to direct the church, and that this is something sacred from the Lord. And, for example, the dreams about my dissertation, I haven't really shared that much until now. But I felt the time was right to be able to do that. KaRyn Lay  18:38   So seek counsel from our Father in heaven about how and when you share these things?  Ken Alford  18:42   I would say very much. You need to be comfortable and recognize that there's a time and a place for everything and every place is not the time to share everything. KaRyn Lay  18:52   And just be grateful. Ken Alford  18:54   Oh absolutely. Be grateful when it does occur, but be open to all of the ways that the Lord can speak to you. KaRyn Lay  19:01   Thanks for sharing.  Ken Alford  19:02   Thank you.   KaRyn Lay  19:04   So, friends, there's the good news. Not every dream that you have about vampires and Abraham Lincoln under your bed is a revelation. And one thing that I really appreciate about Ken's book is that it contains some pretty well-researched guidelines that can help you and me as we try to determine whether our dream is revelatory, or just that late-night Philly cheesesteak coming back to haunt us. That actually happens to me. We're going to have an excerpt from that part of the book in our show notes because we all need a little bit of help figuring out what's real.  Another thing that I, as a storyteller, really love about this book is that it's essentially a collection of stories written down from church history, from Joseph Smith to modern-day prophets and apostles and visionary women, covering all the many ways that those dreams can appear. The dreams in their purposes and the stories are as varied as the people who experienced them. For instance, some dreams are warning dreams and some dreams are teaching dreams. Some are guiding like they were for Ken and some, like the one in the story we're about to hear from Craig, they just help us to know that we're exactly where we should be doing exactly what we should be doing. Here's Craig.   Craig  20:13   Not all dreams are revelatory, but some are. We have Lehi's, and that dream led his family out of Jerusalem into the wilderness. I had been led out of Ogden, Utah, into the wilderness and life was tough.  I grew up in the Ogden area, and I come from a small family farming community called Farr West. I worked on a 250 cow dairy herd all my life. I knew what hard work meant. I love the mountains. I love to be, you know, around my family, that was everything to me. Soon after my mission, once faced with the decision of a career, I knew I wanted to be a teacher because I love to see what the teacher does in the classroom and how ideas change people's lives. And coming off a mission, I wanted to teach religion. So if I could teach Latter-day Saint doctrines, concepts in history, I would love that. And I would love to be able to work with the youth of the church. And so I was fortunate enough to be hired at seminaries and institutes. I began teaching in the Ogden area, and I was now living my dream. I met the sweetheart of my dreams and we married, we had had two children, we were teaching seminary, life was grand. And then a phone call came. Administrators from seminaries and institutes, we appreciate all this and, and then he says, "Craig, we have a new assignment for you if you choose to receive it."  I go, "A new assignment? I've only been in my assignment here for just six months and now you would like me to change it?  He says, "Yes. We need someone to teach English as a second language in Suva, Fiji and we need to know the answer within 24 hours." I decided whatever the Lord asked me to do—discipleship was very important in my life—and the Lord's hand would be in it. Others were inspired, we took time to pray about it, talk to our parents, they all said, "Don't go." And I turned to my wife and I said, "The hand of the Lord is in this. We are to go."  And she says, "I'll support you." And we call them back and in two months, we found herself as Suva, Fiji. Now our administrators might have known how much of a cultural shock this was going to be because they gave us a round trip airfare, meaning we could come home if this wasn't going to work out. My wife, Jana, had never lived outside of the United States, let alone hardly Utah. And while I served a mission and traveled a little bit, this was new to her and she was very homesick. And so she was suffering from a lot of things, trying to deal with the language, trying to figure out how to, you know, make meals in a different culture. She would have to take a bus downtown to the open market area, and she would have to learn a different money system, different kinds of vegetables she's looking at, and the meat was on the hoof, or it was live. And I remember she said to me I'm going to bring home dinner."  I said, "Great. What's that going to be?"  She says, "Chicken." She says, "And oh, by the way, the chicken will be live. You're gonna have to kill it." And I go, "Okay, yeah."  She said, "You grew up on a farm, you'll know what to do about that."  I go, "Yeah, but my dad's not here to show me what to do." And the truth of the matter is, is what happened is the chicken got loose on the bus and was sort of flying around. A Fijian lady grabs the chicken by the neck, and ringed it and killed it right on the bus. And she came home and the chicken was dead. And she says, "I'm sorry the chicken lost its life on the bus." And that was our first experience having our meal. And I plucked the chicken, cleaned the chicken and we had chicken. It wasn't long after when we were there, we all came down with a fever. We learned that was called Dengue fever, which is a mild form of malaria. We suffered through that. Our two children were suffering with heat rash because it was so hot. We were sweating profusely and the humanity was high, I mean, we were just going through all of this. We began to question, "Oh my gosh, what have we gotten ourselves into? We have no friends other than the new people we'd just been introduced to up at LDS Technical College—which is the school I was now asked to teach at. They call it a college, but it really is a high school. And it had forums 3, 4, 5, and six. I was called in to teach forms four and five. And my job was to be able to help the students successfully pass the British system school cert exams. If you don't pass the exam, you cannot go on to form five, which is the pre-course to go to a university. And both math and science and English, all those courses at the school were failing and the students were not being able to move forward to the university. And the church went out on a limb and built this school and Fiji, primarily for its members, so that they could further their education of their young people, the dreams of their parents. And what the school has become nicknamed was "The low down school." Low down because they're so low on their scores, they'll never get their students into university. So the church took action and brought three "pelongis," three of us white folks into this multicultural, diverse situation to bring the scores up. And I was then, teaching English as a second language, something I had really never been trained to do. And so that added to the stress and the difficulty of making the adjustment. My biggest fear was whether I would succeed because if you don't have 80% or above, you have failed and mom and dad will take them out and just put them on the plantation. And their life is pretty much you know, that's what it's going to be the rest of their life. So there I was, day in day out, I was working through what I was doing with my work. I needed something. I needed some answer, that this was the Lord's well for me. And I prayed about that, I fasted about that and I received my answer. It was in the form of a dream.  I remember, the dream is if it was yesterday, it never leaves my mind. I was in my very classroom, in the building that I teach at. I remember I was teaching. But as I was teaching, my students started looking and pointing, and they could see something behind me that I couldn't see. And I turned around and there was someone standing in the air, and he was dressed in white and immense light. And no words were spoken and I could see his feet, and I could see the wounds hit his feet.  Now at that point, everything in the classroom had just dissolved. The students who were there, they weren't part of the dream anymore. But I remember seeing His feet and I bathed His feet in my tears. And I held them close. And I recall, He lifted me up to Him. And He then encircled me in His arms, His ever-loving arms, and He pulled me close. And He said to me, you can do this. And I woke up. I woke up at that point, I sat straight up in bed. I thought I was going to be in the presence of the Savior when I woke up. And then I clearly understood it was a dream. I left our bedchamber and walked over into our of the room. I sat there, just stunned what had happened. And I knew that this was different, a different experience than I had ever had before, my first experience of a revelatory dream. I could not journal it for the longest time. I couldn't bear to write it down in words because it was so sacred to me. And I was filled with this love that He had—my Savior—had shared with me. I was filled with this love that overcame all the obstacles that we had felt. I soon realized that I had transcended the pain and the obstacles that were still in front of us. But my wife had not because she was still suffering and I had now come above that suffering and could understand. She had noticed that something had happened to me. And I finally realized I must tell her about this dream. And so I sat her down and I shared it with her. And I said Jesus said, "We can do this." We can do this. And she says, "I knew something had happened to you. You've changed over the last couple of weeks." She says, "That makes all the difference to me, because if you can do this, then I can too." And it changed our life forever. We stayed three years. And what happened after the students had their exams, they went from the low 50-60 percentile that year, to 86%. And the following year 91%. And then the third year, they were up into the 94 percentile. We won the spelling bees and we won the drama events, we had the best yearbook competition. Every different way we could find to make English live in the lives of the students through lots of curricular activities with them. And it happened for science and for math and for English. When we left, they've never had to bring in a plunge again. And they've continued on and to this day, for 40 years. And from that experience in Fiji, every time the phone call comes, and they have come several of them. Jana, we've got another phone call. And she says, "Where are they asking us to go?" And I will tell her and she says, "Are we going to go?" I said, "We're going to go." It comes back to the dream. You can do this. Not just Fiji, but it meant anything the Lord would ask me to do. I learned that God knew my thoughts and the intents of my heart that I wanted to be a disciple. But it was hard at that time. He knew my thoughts. I believe the Lord knew how to succor me and how to give me that answer. And for me, it was in a dream.   KaRyn Lay  33:50   That was Craig Mansell, one of the three authors of "Dreams As Revelation." That moment in Craig's dream when the Savior encircled him, is such a beautiful image. It makes me wish that I could remember a dream that I've had at some point in my life. I love to think that Heavenly Father can and does sometimes use our dreams just to comfort us, and in the process reveals something about ourselves that can help us move forward. For Craig and Jana, his wife, it was that reminder that our strength and sustaining power to complete our missions and callings here on Earth, doesn't have to come from us. Because when we are yoked with the Savior, embraced by him, we move together, and we have access to his power. And we can have hope in that kind of success so that when the phone rings next time, we're ready to heed the call and head wherever we're asked to go. Our final story comes from Emily who learned that while we can't receive revelation for another person, sometimes God does use our dreams to help us minister to one another. Here's Emily.   Emily  34:50   When I came back to work full time, the man in the cubicle next to me became a really good friend. He had been hired by the same man who hired me. He was a mutual friend of ours who had died of cancer some years previous. And this colleague of mine had spoken at his funeral and we just were really close and had a great relationship. This colleague had a son, his only son, who had been introduced to drugs in elementary school and struggled with them for years and years. And finally, as parents they had to make him leave the home and have him try to figure out on his own what to do with his life. And he was figuring it out and had actually come home as an adult and was working on putting his life back together and making really good progress. So you can imagine how shocked they were when one day the sheriff showed up at their door and said that their son had died of an accidental drug overdose.  It was a terrible, terribly sad turn of affairs and my friend was devastated and sad, but faithful. And he spoke at his son's funeral, which I thought was incredibly courageous. When you're in that much pain and have that much grief, I just, I can't imagine having the strength to be able to speak at that funeral. But he wanted to tell his son's story. He wanted to be sure that people understood the whole picture, and how he knew that his son had been doing his best to return to the light. So some months after the funeral, one night, I had a very vivid dream in which I dreamed of this young man who had died. The son of my colleague and it was really strange because I didn't ever meet him. I didn't know him at all, and I'm not even sure I knew what he looked like. But in my dream, I knew that that was who it was. And while I was watching him, a man came and put his arm around him and started walking with him and was sitting down with him, and clearly talking with him and working with him. And it was clear again to me that this man who was doing this was our mutual friend who had passed away, the man who had hired us. That it was that friend who was now working with my colleague's son on the other side of the veil. It's so interesting to think about how I recognized that it was our mutual friend who was helping this boy. I'm not even sure that I knew it from looking at him, although, you know, he was very familiar to me, of course, his face would have been very familiar to me. But it was almost more a feeling that I had, and it made so much sense to me, that it would be him because that was the kind of person that he was, that was the kind of friend he was. And I know he would have done anything he could have for my colleague. If he'd been here he would have. And so it made sense that he would continue to feel that way on the other side of the veil. When I woke up from that dream, I felt so calm and clear. And it was so clear in my mind that what I had experienced a certainty about what I had seen, and a clarity of detail in that whole interaction. I didn't hear anything that was said, I'm not even conscious of there having been sound, just of being an observer of this interaction going on. But I do remember feeling an urgency to capture that while it was clear in my mind, so I could share it. The next day, I wrote a letter to my colleague who had since retired. When I thought about sharing the dream with my friend, my first thought was, "That's a little presumptious." Like "Who am I to be getting a dream for you?" Which is why when I wrote to him, I tried very hard to make it clear, "I don't know why but I just want you to know this is what happened." So a little nervous, just because it seemed unfair, in a way, that it should be me and not him that would get the dream. And I said, "I don't know why I was given this dream and not you. It seems very strange to me because I don't have any skin in the game. There's no reason for this to have come to me, except that I think Heavenly Father knew I would tell you about it, I would share it with you and that maybe it would mean more to you, or might be easier for you to believe it, if it came to somebody who just didn't really have a stake in this. Maybe you would have thought it was wishful-thinking if it had come to you, but I want you to know that this is what I dreamed, and this is what I saw. And I feel certain that our friend is taking care of your son on the other side." Just another really interesting message that people who cared about us here, continue to care about us. That we have people who have been in our lives who really are a lasting part of our eternal lives and our eternal progression. I have wondered why Heavenly Father gave me that dream. The more I have thought about it over the years, the more layers I uncover about what it really means to me and what I've learned from it. And it was a really rare occurrence. It's not a way that the Lord typically speaks to me. And I think part of it is because he knew that I had the kind of friendship with my colleague that I would share it with him. And then I would actually write it and share it in a form that he would keep that is sort of my form of communication is writing so that he knew it would be a record for my friend. It makes me want to listen to my friends more. Someone says, "I've been thinking about you," or some of those kinds of things, it makes me want to listen more to my own feelings. I've been thinking about somebody, I should tell them, I better let them know that means something. I don't always get it that clearly, as clearly as it came in that dream. Not that I think you should get revelation for other people or should plan on doing it, because I don't believe that but sometimes I just think He's just generous in that way. But it was a good reminder that the Lord really does want to communicate with me and with his children, all his children. It really helps me to know that there are things that I can learn that are specific for my development or for the help of people that I love, that the Lord really wants to help us and He'll do it through whatever avenue will get us the help that we need.   KaRyn Lay  43:02   That was Emily. I love that Emily's experience with this dream was a personal call to action. It would have been really easy for her to brush it off, or even share that one time and call it good. She didn't. And as a friend of Emily's, I can attest to the fact that she often sends the scripture, the note, the poem at just the right moment. And that is the beauty of our relationship with revelatory experiences and ministering. They're meant to open a connection between our earthly existence and our heavenly one, to unite our spirits and our bodies for a brief moment so that we can be different forever. And so I take two lessons from Emily's story. First, to be the kind of disciple God can trust to write it down. And second, to be the kind of disciple God can trust to let the dream or the prompting or the ministering assignment, change me.  While I've never had anything more than anxiety dreams, like the one I mentioned to Ken. Our producer, Sarah, has had so many symbolic and revelatory dreams. In fact, she even shared one with us in Episode 12 of this podcast. It's the episode called "Love Is What Brings Us Together Today." So of course, I had to ask her thoughts on this theme. And first of all, she echoed what each of the storytellers says about the dreams that they've had that have revealed something. They said, "This dream felt different. Other dreams are mostly nonsense, but for some reason, this one felt special, and I knew it immediately." Sarah also shared this thought, "In our dreams, we are sort of uninhibited. We're free from some of the constructs and constraints of real life, like the laws of physics or the passage of time. But also, we're not always free from some of the social constructs or the limits that we put on our thinking. And I think that juxtaposition of the freedom of physical law and the ways that we're still tied to the earth, I think that's kind of where the rubber hits the road. The contrast opens us up to seeing our world in new ways or learning something that we didn't expect to. Messages can come through with different clarity because we're in a different kind of world. I personally love that idea that God can use this unique revelatory tool to cut through some of what I often call 'Earth dust.' 'Earth dust' is that feeling that settles on us little by little that lulls us into thinking that the ways of the world are the ways of God, or that who we are here right now is all we'll ever be. That earth dust can be so subtle and so insidious, and really detrimental to our spiritual growth. I can't help but think what a gift it is to have a dream, a moment of otherworldliness and connection with our heavenly parents through revelation. Which by the way, the word revelation comes from the Latin, 'to unveil to uncover or lay bare.' Through revelation, however it comes to us, we are laid bare as true children of God in those moments and we see ourselves, and our true nature as problem solvers, creators, teachers, just as Ken did. Or we see ourselves as worthy, capable and embraced by Christ as Craig did. And we see ourselves as true friends and trusted allies in the work of ministring as Emily did. Every one of those revelatory moments helps us to be better able to move forward in our discipleship, despite the inevitable accumulation of more and more Earth dust. Revelation is a clearing off, a starting over. Whether your moments of heavenly connection and uncovering come through dreams or one of the myriad other ways God uses spiritual gifts to communicate with us, what we can absolutely trust is that He is doing everything He can to reveal us and our true nature to ourselves so that we can win, so that we can come home to Him. That's it for this episode of "This Is The Gospel." Thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for putting up with my winter voice. And thank you to Ken, Craig, and Emily for sharing their stories and their faith. We'd also like to offer a special thanks to Dr. Mary Jane Woodger for helping us to make this episode happen. If you want more stories about dreams and revelation, well, you definitely need to check out the show notes at LDSliving.com/thisisthegospel. We'll have a link to "Dreams As Revelation," as well as an excerpt about the different guiding principles that can help you determine if your dreams are a revelation, or indigestion.  We really appreciate those of you who've taken the time to leave a review on iTunes for this podcast. You're probably sick of me asking but, hey, I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and I know that if we don't ask, we don't receive. So if you haven't already told us in a review how you feel about our stories about the podcast, please take a minute to do that. It really does help more people find the show. All of our stories are true and accurate as a firm by our storytellers. If you have a great story about your experience living the Gospel of Jesus Christ, well we want to hear from you on the pitch line. Leave us a short three-minute story pitch at 515-519-6179 and you can find out what themes we're working on right now by following us on Instagram and Facebook @thisisthegospel_podcast. This episode was produced by Sarah Blake with story producing and editing by me, KaRyn Lay, Katie Lambert, and Kelly Campbell. It was scored, mixed and mastered by Mix At Six Studios and our executive producer is Erin Hallstrom. You can find past episodes of this podcast and other LDS Living podcasts at LDSliving.com/podcast. Have a great week.

If I'd have remained in a traditional corporate setting, I would not have connected with my kids the way I have. I'd have been like every other absent dad out there - always compensating for my lack of presence with trinkets and an all-too-brief annual holiday. Today, you can build a career around your life and still enjoy all the money and status you think you need. Your career and your relationship with your kids needn't be mutually exclusive anymore.

Today’s episode is sponsored by Outlander Stars Hello and welcome to Film Pro Productivity, the podcast which helps film professionals and other creative people to live a more focused, effective and HAPPY life. My name is Carter Ferguson and this is EPISODE 36 – Crowdfunding: Lessons Learned Intro “If you launch your campaign with zero audience, you are launching to crickets.” — Khierstyn Ross “Crowdfunding Uncut” UNQUOTE Today, I’m talking about crowdfunding - If you have ever considered running a campaign of your own then there’s a few things which I’ve picked up along the way that you might find useful. As it’s still fresh in my memory and I’ve had a few messages about how I approach a campaign I thought it worth an episode. I see campaigns launched every week by filmmakers and artists and I’ve even seen a few film pros run them to get equipment or develop ideas. Running them efficiently and effectively and achieving success with them, however, is easier said than done. But first things first - What is crowdfunding? According to Wikipedia, it is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising small amounts of money from a large number of people, typically via the Internet. It goes on to say that in 2015, over US$34 billion – yes you heard me right BILLION) was raised worldwide by crowdfunding. The modern crowdfunding model is generally based on three types of actors: the project initiator who PROPOSES THE IDEA OR PROJECT to be funded, individuals or groups who SUPPORT THE IDEA, and a moderating organization (or "platform") that BRINGS THE PARTIES TOGETHER to launch the idea. It has been used to fund a wide range of for-profit, entrepreneurial ventures such as artistic and creative projects, medical expenses, travel, and community-oriented social entrepreneurship projects. My experiences of crowdfunding are entirely based on the use of the platform IndieGoGo, but there are a myriad of well-known crowdfunding platforms with good to middling reputations. Some are perhaps better for business campaigns, others for creative purposes. The one I hear about most often is Kickstarter but the 10 most popular crowdfunding platforms in 2018 according to INC.com also included Patreon, GoFundMe, CrowdRise, PledgeMusic, Razoo, RocketHub and finally Give.  “Before you even start building your crowdfunding page, Start building a crowd first.” — Roy Morejon of Command Partners UNQUOTE So, just last week as I start this episode, I ran a crowdfunding campaign to raise finance for THIS season, but before I did so, as you may have heard in earlier shows, I thought long and hard about what I was getting myself into. I’ve done all this before, you see, and it’s a hell of an undertaking. I’ve run 4 successful campaigns using the crowdfunding platform IndieGoGo, but with each campaign has come a great commitment of time and energy and a genuine commitment to delivering what I promise to those that have backed me. If you run a crowdfunding campaign and fail to deliver that which you promise, you will have a hell of a time getting anyone to trust you again.   Even with my positive experiences in raising finance through crowdfunding in the past I was extremely cautious about running a new one now. One reason for this is that I believe you can only “drink so many times from the same well” and I have a rule about never running more than one in a year. I’d also say that with so many people at the same proverbial well, it can become muddied and make people less likely to back you. The other big reason that I really wasn’t keen was that it is a MASSIVE undertaking. By tackling a fundraiser I was committing a vast amount of my time and energy to promoting and managing it and the cost, in loss of those valuable resources felt too great. I did run it though, successfully, and the primary thing that swayed me was this – By the very act of running the campaign, I would be promoting the show. Raising finance to support my endeavour was a very powerful second reason, but finding new ways to positively promote this show is really difficult and the peripheral promotional benefits which go with a crowdfunding campaign finally won me over. Lesson So let me get into some basics. There are some elements they say you should always do with a crowdfunding campaign - A Catchy Title, A Compelling Video, An Explicit Goal and Timeline, A good explanation of "Why" you are running it, A List of Costs, Great perks and regular Progress Updates. If you think you can just roll up and put your hand out then you’re going to be disappointed. There are a few good examples that prove that a bad idea or even an improperly presented good one, will not hit its target. For example:  Corey Feldman's 'Elev8or 2 Ascension' album only got 15% of its $100,000 target. The reboot of TV show Good Times which only hit 1% of its $1,000,000 target figure. And the sequel to the 2014 Nicolas Cage fiasco “Left Behind”. The original film scores 1% on rotten tomatoes, so you can imagine the powerful feeling that lay behind NOT FUNDING that Kickstarter. Chris Muscarella of Field Company says about crowdfunding “Do your Homework. Trying to throw together a campaign in a few days and thinking that you will shoot the moon is highly unlikely.” Crowdfunding is not an easy way to free money so if you are serious about raising capital in this way, you’re going to have to work hard for it. Asking a bunch of people you do and don’t know to help you fund your dreams is far tougher and more time consuming than it sounds. It’s also a landscape which is changing all the time, so you can’t always, as I found out with my latest campaign, utilise the same techniques to get results. I’ll talk about that a little later. Mihail Klenov of Half Bikes says “You must always be honest with your backers about what you do and why you do it.” Each campaign or product is unique, but there are some things you can do to get closer to crowdfunding success. TRUST is probably the biggest issue when it comes to crowdfunding: When you have no prior record, you have to consider how you can generate credibility with backers. Simply stated - without TRUST you might not generate enough interest in your campaign and fail to meet your targets. CHOOSE THE RIGHT PLATFORM: This is essential and as I listed earlier, you have plenty of legitimate platforms to choose from. If you’re raising money for a film, then go to the platform where people who might want to back it go - Don’t go for a small local platform if there’s no interest in what you are pushing there already. Crowdfunding has an internet-driven worldwide audience, so go where the audience for your product or project is would be my advice. SET REALISTIC TARGETS AND A DEADLINE. Setting up the right targets and the time to achieve them is essential. If the target seems too outrageous, the backers simply won’t support you. And not only should you decide beforehand what your fund-raising goal is, but you should also specify timeline goals, production goals and any others needed to keep your project moving forward. This information proves you know what you are talking about and will allow your backers to get behind you. BUILDING INTEREST. This is a common fail in crowdfunding campaigns. Nine times out of ten you need to build interest in your campaign a good bit prior to it starting. This will help you to get an initial large boost to your goal. I kinda trailed that I was going to do this on the show here, but due to time constraints, I only got specific about it a few weeks before. I was aiming for the lowest amount that IndieGoGo allows though, so my target was as achievable as it could be and I didn’t feel too bad about it. One thing I must add is that most platforms will NOT put any effort into promoting your campaign for you. Generating interest in your specific campaign is entirely up to you, although occasionally you may get a random backer passing through on the platform. Just don’t rely on it. Fulfilment. This is one area that is so important. It’s also far trickier than it sounds. Your reputation hangs on your ability to not just deliver the crowdfunding goal, but also to provide your contributors with their rewards, perks or whatever you want to call them, in a timely manner. Some problems that can be associated with fulfilment include: Not budgeting for it. Not budgeting for postage and packaging. Communication problems: I have had quite a few issues with the delivery of perks for my campaign. I get email addresses from IndieGoGo as a download, but I made a rod for my own back by communicating with backers via Twitter and Facebook direct messaging, through the platform itself and via two different email addresses. My situation was further complicated by receiving three messages through my website’s contact page. Trying to collate and verify information from so many different sources was and still is a nightmare, so if you can, encourage all your backers to communicate to you through one email address. If you do that, life will be a lot easier, believe me. DO YOUR RESEARCH. Before you even start your crowdfunding campaign, do your research. Find out everything you need to know about crowdfunding - mine for success strategies. Not only should you know how to run a successful campaign, but you should also be aware of all the rules and regulations surrounding this funding source. This was an area on which I fell down a little on the last run. I had calculated just 5% in costs going to IndieGoGo, but the reality was that I was losing percentages of committed monies to credit card companies and even a £25 surcharge at the end to cover the disbursement of funds. Rather than the percentage of running costs for the campaign totalling 5% of the total it ended up at 14% through my not following the fine print. CREATE MARKETING MATERIALS. Once you know who your target audience is and, create high-quality marketing materials. Personalize materials to yourself and your message and if you are wondering what is most effective here. Its video. You must create video content, with you right out there on camera, if you are to be successful in raising finance. Your face will gain a backers trust. If you don’t appear on camera it makes backers uneasy. Get over your fear of cameras and get in front of one, or you will fail. MAKE THE REWARDS WORTHWHILE. While you're not REQUIRED to reward your backers, offering something in return for their support makes for a more successful campaign. Make sure that any reward you offer is worthwhile, as well. Some will be happy with just a thank you but try and ensure that at least one of your perks has value. I tried not to offer perks that involved postage and packing so my most valuable perk was the opportunity to sponsor an episode, and it worked. Without that perk, I’d never have hit the target. Clay Herbert of Fund Your Dream says “The best campaigns I have worked with tell a specific story to a specific group of people.” So with that in mind, my next tip is GET PERSONAL… That’s why I say get in front of the camera and talk - When people feel that they know you, they'll feel more comfortable with, and trust in, your goals. Opening up about yourself and your situation is a great way to help your campaign see more success. PROMOTE IT. Once you've published your crowdfunding campaign, start spreading the word. Share your campaign on social media, with family and friends, on blogs and anywhere else where you can get it out there. The wider your reach, the more potential you have for investors to see it. It’s essential to talk to your backers throughout the entire process. This also helps to build trust. While you don't need to tell them every detail, be as open and transparent as possible. Don't just pitch them or try to sell to them either. With all that advice given, here are a few tips on what NOT to do too. E-BEGGING. This is something I detest and another reason that I think long and hard before running any crowd funder: According to URBAN DICTIONARY.com, this is when some pretentious asshole (usually on Youtube) decides to solicit "donations" from his or her audience. Sometimes they try to hide their e-begging under the guise of elaborate "movie projects" on sites like indiegogo.com with laughable incentives like "Donate 100.00 and get your name in the credits" ... The irony is that most of these youtube "movies" cost only a fraction of the donations received. The e-beggar then pockets the rest as profit and then laughs all the way to the bank. E-begging preys on stupid people but if you aren't a complete sheep, you won't be fooled by e-beggars. EXCEEDING YOUR TARGET. Yes, it happens. I had considered what would happen if I exceeded the campaign total, and I implemented it - My stretch goal was unspecific though. I just said any additional money would go into promotion for the show. I didn’t mess about with it as I had already met my target and I was happy with that. One thing to be cautious of - is not being able to deliver your promised rewards so be cautious and have a plan for this eventuality. IF YOUR CAMPAIGN GOES VIRAL, YOU BETTER HAVE A BIT OF AN IDEA HOW YOU ARE GOING TO PROCEED. ALL OR NOTHING. Some great projects fail simply because their fundraising goal is just too high and the fundraising platforms will not distribute any funds if you don’t hit your target. Many campaigns raise a sizeable amount but get nothing because they didn’t meet the funding goal. Be prepared. Do your research. Don’t fall on this really obvious detail. NOT ENOUGH TIME. New Crowd funders fail to understand the process involved in crowdfunding and the need to build excitement and a community before launch. There is just not enough time during a campaign to do the outreach necessary for success. You need to build an audience and then launch a campaign. You will never have enough time to do it all at once. And I’m going to end this list of mistakes with one just as problematic. TOO MUCH TIME. Yes, you heard me right. As I said earlier, running these campaigns is massively time-consuming. Epically energy absorbing in fact, and your promotional content will be swallowed up with each and every day that you are committed to it. Just as damaging to your efforts will be finding yourself chained 24/7 to a campaign that goes on forever. When I planned the campaign for this season, I set it at 7 days, and even knowing I was setting myself up for a tight deadline, I went with it as I knew I could create and deliver the publicity and social media interaction required for that period. If I'd run it for a month I’d have needed a month of marketing materials and ideas. Running a shorter campaign for a realistic amount was for me the only option. Peter Dering of the founder of Peak Design says “Something we have done really well with our campaigns is that we are extremely transparent. We go to great lengths and to create and justify our designs.” Earlier I mentioned that some things have changed as I’ve run several campaigns. On this last campaign I realised that the social networks are hobbling our ability to use them for promotion – for example, Twitter no longer previews YOUTUBE. Instagram only shows its own content and Facebook is hit and miss with its 3rd party previews. You may have to create content to be hosted Separately on each platform now. For the record, Instagram is limited to 60 seconds but you can kinda get around this with Instagram TV. Facebook limits its own videos to 15 minutes which is quite healthy, and Twitter allows videos of up to 2 minutes and 20 seconds. If you are putting out video content therefor, perhaps put out short 60 second videos so that the same content can be hosted on all three platforms… I’m going to wrap this up now but here’s a great bit of productivity advice to add to all that I’ve said already – I used a really simple hack with my first campaign which ended up at 156% of my target. That hack was that I didn’t start from scratch. I found similar campaigns which had done well and worked up my content to be based on those samples. It’s a hack that only goes so far but one that works. Use someone else’s successful campaign as a blueprint to build a new one of your own. One example that I include now in every campaign is the use of a pie chart to show where the funds will go. It’s helpful to potential backers and it’s helpful for you in planning how you will place the funds when you raise them, but it wasn’t my idea. If you plan to run a campaign, spy out a few that you like and which you think really work and use them to inspire you. Summing Up Thanks for listening to this longer episode than usual. I just want to remind you once again that the primary reason that I eventually bit the bullet and ran a campaign for this season was, NOT financial, but to raise the profile of this podcast. Crowdfunding is a powerful force and for creative people, it’s one which you should learn to harness and embrace. It’s not however just about the money. Call To Action Your call to action this week is not to run a campaign, but to consider how it could help you achieve your dreams. Let it open your mind to possibilities you had not previously considered. Ending I’ll end today's show with the words of Anne Frank, who said: “No one has ever become poor by giving.” Thanks to all of you who helped spread the word or backed my campaign for this season – and thank you all for listening here today – now take control of your own destiny, keep on shootin’, and join me next time on Film Pro Productivity. The music you can hear right now is Adventures by A Himitsu You can view the show notes for this episode on the official website filmproproductivity.com You can follow my personal account on Twitter and Instagram @fight_director or follow the show on Twitter @filmproprodpod or on Facebook @Filmproproductivity Please support the show by subscribing, spreading the word and leaving an AWESOME review. References: https://www.inc.com/larry-kim/op-10-crowdfunding-platforms-of-2018.html https://medium.com/@catapooolt/15-profound-quotes-elucidating-the-essence-of-crowdfunding-df62fc58ea34 https://www.floship.com/7-potential-problems-with-crowdfunding/ https://www.crowd101.com/biggest-crowdfunding-mistakes-how-to-avoid/     Thanks: A Himitsu Music: Adventures by A Himitsu https://www.soundcloud.com/a-himitsuCreative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported— CC BY 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b... Music released by Argofox https://www.youtu.be/8BXNwnxaVQE Music provided by Audio Library https://www.youtu.be/MkNeIUgNPQ8 ––– • Contact the artist: x.jonaz@gmail.com https://www.facebook.com/ahimitsuhttps://www.twitter.com/ahimitsu1 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgFwu-j5-xNJml2FtTrrB3A

We humans love to feel powerful and in control. But each of us has a handful of weaknesses, and we try desperately to hide them from the rest of the world. But time and again, God tells us when we’re weak, He is strong. And when we turn over our weakness to Him and make Him the hero of our lives, He can transform that weakness into our greatest strength for His glory. Our guests this week, pastor Derek Grier and publisher Wayne McKay, share how God’s used some of their pain points to reach others. As an introvert, Dr. Grier never expected to be a pastor. With God’s help, he’s learned how to refuel so he can lead the rapidly-growing Grace Church and reach others through new book When God Stops. When he was a child in Sunday School, Wayne McKay had a hard time understanding the Bible. As an adult, he developed BibleForce, a graphic novel brand that would help kids engage with the life-changing messages of God’s Word and show them heroes to look up to.   Links, Products and Resources Mentioned: Sarah Young, author of Jesus Calling Jesus Always Jesus Calling (Textured Gray Leathersoft): Enjoying Peace in His Presence (with Full Scriptures) Jesus Calling books Jesus Calling interview with David Crowder & Francesca Battistelli Bishop Derek Grier Grace Church (Dumfries, VA) When God Stops: Faith That Gets God’s Attention Howard University   Wayne McKay (Founder of BibleForce) BibleForce Graphic Novel   The Next Door ministry organization    Interview Quotes: “The way I have learned to describe it is that introversion versus extroversion is about how you refuel.” - Dr. Derek Grier   “What captured me was [Jesus’] character. He became my hero, even before He became my Lord.” - Dr. Derek Grier    “I don't really think I grew my church as much as my church grew me.” - Dr. Derek Grier   “If you begin to really communicate God's truth caringly, consistently, and clearly, hungry people will beat a path to your door, because people want to know God.” - Dr. Derek Grier   “Sometimes, we just stay in that place where God revealed Himself to us twenty years ago, and that's it.” - Dr. Derek Grier   “We have to continue to step out in our faith journey and do things that we have not done before, in order for us to continue to get a growing revelation of who God is.” - Dr. Derek Grier    “I wasn't a very good student of the Bible when I was a kid, because I just didn't understand it. If I'd had a picture story where I could’ve looked at something, then I would have been far more interested when I was younger.” - Wayne McKay    “I think heroes should be displaying good moral code, standing up for others, unafraid to take on confrontation, and should be a good member of the community.” - Wayne McKay ________________________ Enjoy these videos on Jesus Calling YouTube channel: Audio podcast: https://bit.ly/2uCnNM0  Original Series video podcast: https://bit.ly/2WzFY0O  ________________________    Connect with Jesus Calling Instagram Facebook Twitter Pinterest YouTube Jesus Calling Website

JJ Virgin is a 4 x New York Times Best Selling Author, TV show Host, Triple Board certified Celebrity Nutritionist and a warrior mum. In 2012 JJ's 16 year old son Grant was the victim of a hit and run accident and was left barely hanging onto life, after weeks in a critical condition and defying all the odds he slowly emerged from his coma with major brain trauma and 13 fractures and a near torn aorta. JJ was told from the outset he wouldn't survive the first night, that he wouldn't survive the airlift to the hospital, that he wouldn't survive the operation and that if by some miracle he did his brain damage would make it a life not worth living. But JJ is a fighter and she decided from the outset that her son would survive and thrive and that she wouldn't rest until he was 110%. The years of rehabilitation and the strategies she used to get him there is what we share in this interview. This powerful story resonated with me because I have been through the same experience with my mother and I too refused to give up, had to advocate for her rehabilitation and took a multple pronged approach to her recovery as did JJ with her son.   This incredibly powerful woman is a testament to what the right mindset combined with love, belief, faith and the ability to build a team around her can do to beat the odds.   We would like to thank our sponsors Running Hot - By Lisa Tamati & Neil Wagstaff If you want to run faster, longer and be stronger without burnout and injuries then check out and TRY our Running Club for FREE on a 7 day FREE TRIAL Complete holistic running programmes for distances from 5km to ultramarathon and for beginners to advanced runners.   All include Run training sessions, mobility workouts daily, strength workouts specific for runners, nutrition guidance and mindset help Plus injury prevention series, foundational plans, running drill series and a huge library of videos, articles, podcasts, clean eating recipes and more.   www.runninghotcoaching.com/info and don't forget to subscribe to our youtube channel at Lisa's Youtube channel  www.yotube.com/user/lisatamat and come visit us on our facebook group   www.facebook.com/groups/lisatamati Epigenetics Testing Program by Lisa Tamati & Neil Wagstaff. Wouldn’t it be great if your body came with a user manual? Which foods should you eat, and which ones should you avoid? When, and how often should you be eating? What type of exercise does your body respond best to, and when is it best to exercise? These are just some of the questions you’ll uncover the answers to in the Epigenetics Testing Program along with many others. There’s a good reason why epigenetics is being hailed as the “future of personalised health”, as it unlocks the user manual you’ll wish you’d been born with! No more guess work. The program, developed by an international team of independent doctors, researchers, and technology programmers for over 15 years, uses a powerful epigenetics analysis platform informed by 100% evidenced-based medical research. The platform uses over 500 algorithms and 10,000 data points per user, to analyse body measurement and lifestyle stress data, that can all be captured from the comfort of your own home Find out more about our  Epigenetics Program and how it can change your life and help you reach optimal health, happiness and potential at: https://runninghotcoaching.com/epigenetics You can find all our programs, courses, live seminars and more at www.lisatamati.com    Transcription from the show. Speaker 2: (00:02) Well, hello everybody. It's Lisa Tamati here at pushing the limits today. I have a really wonderful special guest with me all the way from Tampa in Florida. She's an absolute superstar of a lady. She's a celebrity nutritionist, four times New York Times best seller fitness hall of Famer and she's also a warrior mum and she has a very interesting story today that we're going to delve into both in her career and what she's achieved but also,uwas ubrain injury in regards to his son grants. We had a hit and run x events. So welcome to the show JJ. It's fantastic to have you. Thank you. Good to be here also. (00:42) So JJ, I just want to start a little bit of it with a background. If you wouldn't mind sharing, what you do and your, your books and your work a little bit. That'd be fantastic. Speaker 3: (00:54) All right. I am a nutrition and fitness expert and so I've got a bunch of books I've written over the years. Online programs. I speak, I do TV. I had a couple, I was kind of helped start reality TV because I was on Dr Phil's weight loss challenges for two years. It was really when that whole thing was kinda getting going. Then I had my own show on TLC called freaky eaters. So I've been really fortunate to just be able to work in something that I'm super passionate about, which is anything related to health and wellness. And then I also have an organization where we help other doctors and health experts get their message out to the world called mindshare. Speaker 2: (01:37) Oh Wow. And that is something that we definitely want to delve into a little bit too. So now I want to go back to you've got two sons, Bryce and Grant and in 2012 Grant was the victim of a hit and run accident. Can we share a little bit about that story and what you sort of went through with him and you know, it really resonated with me, your book and your story because a lot of the same dramas that you have over there, it was with the system a few like we have here as well. Probably even worse, the speaks and you had to be a real fighter and therefore the title of your, your book sort of really resonated with me as well. So can we go into that story a little bit and tell us what happened with Grant? Speaker 3: (02:29) Yeah, it's really a story I realized after the fact. It's really a story about what it takes to be a caretaker and I think that's important to underscore because it's a role all of us will have to play, right? I mean, at some point in your life you're going to be taking care of kids, you're going to be taking care of your parents. Maybe you're taking care of both at the same time or a spouse or siblings. So it's, it's one of those roles in life that you will probably face and how you show up during that role can make the difference between life and death for that person. So and also you know, how you show up is going to make a difference on your personal health too. So the grant was 16 years old. My other son was 15 years old. Speaker 3: (03:15) Bryce and grant went out to walk to a friend's house one night and got hit by a car and I didn't see this. A neighbour didn't see him getting hit. He just saw him lying on the street. You saw this woman get out of her car, gasp, get back in and drive off. And he then called nine one one and he was airlifted to the local hospital. When we got there, they told us that he had a torn aorta and it was going to rupture sometime in the next 24 hours unless it got repaired. But that he would never survive the airlift to the next hospital. They couldn't repair it there. He would have to, but that he wouldn't survive that. And even if you were to survive that, he would most likely not survive the surgery. And even if you were to survive that, he'd be so brain damaged. Speaker 3: (04:07) It wouldn't be worth it. I mean, literally they said that, I remember looking at this doctor going, he didn't, did he say that? And My 15 year old looked at the doctrine, he said, well, maybe like, is there a 0.25% chance he'd make it because the doctor already said his aorta was going to rupture sometime in the next 24 hours. And the doctor said, that sounds about right. Bryce could looked over at me. That's not zero. You know, and we're like, we'll take those odds. And because I think any, any parent out there or anyone who loves anybody would have to agree that as long as there's a chance, even if it's the teensiest little chance, like you've got to go for it, you know, you've got to fight for it. I mean, the idea that I was gonna let my son die here, there was absolutely no way I was going to do that. Speaker 3: (04:52) So we overruled. This doctor. Had Him airlifted. He survived the airlift, went through surgery, he survived that surgery. Now when he came out of the surgery, he had a stint in and he was, his aorta was fine, but he was in a deep coma. The neurosurgeons were like, we don't know if he'll wake up. And I remember standing in the hospital and he had 13 fractures. He was in this deep coma, multiple brain bleeds. And there were like literally Lisa, two little fingers I could hold on to everything else was either covered with road rash. It was bandaged shoes and cast. And I was standing there holding this little fingers and I said, grant, you know, I love you so much and nothing, you know, just the beeps of the machine he had, he was on a respirator, he had a central line. So it was all these things being monitored. Speaker 3: (05:43) And then I said, and your brother Bryce loves you so much. And I felt the littlest fingers squeezy and Huh. And then I said, you know, grandma loves you so much, nothing. And I said, your girlfriend Kenzie loves you so much. And that's when I felt this big by my hand getting picked a little bit up. And I said, you know, grant, you're going to be 110% your name means warrior. I got this. I've got so many friends in the business who can help, but I need you to fight. You've got to fight, you've gotta hang on for me and your name means warrior. Turns out. So I said, you just got to you. You've got to fight all, handle the rest and we're going to get you to be 110% and I just lived that 110%. I was so afraid to let anything else get into my brain that, that you know, the what ifs. Speaker 3: (06:31) Like what if he doesn't wake up? What if he can't walk away? I just, cause I felt like if I thought it, it would happen. So I've always been one of those people who believes that you can, you can create your reality. And I just managed my mindset. I stay focused on the 110% and you know, and there are a lot of times in there, things were not looking like they were even gonna make it to like 30%. You know, I'm much less a hundred, much less this like unrealistic number that doesn't exist. But I will tell you today, after being told that he would never survive an air lift or surgery, he'd be so brain damaged. He'd never wake up, he wouldn't walk, he couldn't hear like over and over and over again. He is better than before that accident is so, and you know, it has been this thing in our life that has made all of us in the family so much better and stronger because now you know, the, the things that would average most people would get rattled about, the average person would get upset about, they don't even like, they don't even trick, trick trigger us at all. Speaker 3: (07:39) Like we're like, Eh, no one's dying here. You know, and I'm sure you relate, right? I mean like stuff like this, you realize the stuff that people let get them upset on a regular basis. It just doesn't, who cares? You know, Speaker 2: (07:57) Actually. Yeah. And I mean, I've, my lesson is, know my story with my mom and very similar, not gonna survive if she does miss and brain damage, if she, you know, when she did wake up after weeks in a coma sh lights on, nobody home Speaker 2: (08:16) Years and years of rehabilitation and we're out a story's cross. And why this is so important for me is that you never gave up. You keep your mind on the know. Exactly. I had that 110% in my head too when I go around still saying that. And my mom's only at 90%, so I wa I've still got a wee way to go. But in their whole process, it's not that you don't have doubts and disappear and times where you're on the ground crying going, oh my God, how am I going to get through this? But it's keeping it standing back up every time, Speaker 3: (08:48) Every time. And Hey, here's the thing, Lisa. So you went for 110% and got to 90 Speaker 3: (08:55) That's a lot better than the zero they were giving you. Right. You know, like you look at it, I kept thinking, oh, I'm going to go for 110% if I get to like wherever I get to is better than the zero that they, the 0.25 they gave me. So you know, you just gotta keep going. And by the way, it's only been recently that he really has been getting to this hundred and 10% I just figured as long as he's alive, there's always something else I can do. It's something amazing I can do. So he is now better than before the accident. But now I'm not showing, you know, we're just going to keep Speaker 2: (09:27) Pushing. Exactly. And you've got to, you've got to keep that focus. One of the things, the, the title of my book that's coming out is called relentless. And that's exactly what you have to be is totally and utterly real. And I know, and with my journey, I came up against a huge opposition to the way that I was wanting to rehabilitate my mum in both the resources that I wouldn't try to get hold of. In my approach, I was criticized a lot for why are you putting you through such a rigorous and difficult training regime? Why don't you just let it be comfortable and know Speaker 3: (10:07) Rest, no wrestling cupcakes and just let her be Speaker 2: (10:10) Exactly. Cupcakes and this, I mean, I'm a ultra endurance athlete. I've been an athlete my entire life and I know so we, you know, do 200 300 kilometer races and things and I know how to overcome when your mind is trying to stop you. I know that people are capable of so much more than what we think we are. Yeah. What I have issue with, I understand that the medical professionals do not want to give you false hope, but to take away your hope creating. Huh. Any hope makes you have a weak action. Like you're not going to fight because you don't believe there's a waste at home. You know, here's the thing. Speaker 4: (10:55) Okay. Speaker 3: (10:55) No one can take our hope away. Speaker 4: (10:57) Cool. Speaker 3: (10:59) So what we've really got to manage is, is we're, we, we're putting people in the wrong places. What you're going when you're going to a doctor is you're getting an opinion. You can do what you want with the opinion. That's what you're getting as an opinion. You know, like the opinion of the doctor at the first hospital was the complete opposite of the opinion of the doctor in the second hospital. Why the first hospital doctor worked in Palm Springs, California, where the average age coming into the urgent care, the trauma center was about 75. Oh Wow. And for 75 year old with a torn aorta, multiple brain bleeds, multiple fractures, this would've been it. Speaker 3: (11:40) But for a 16 year old, it's not. And so the trauma center, we got them to, which is the second trauma centers, number two trauma center in the country in us, they see all sorts of gang fights, people thrown off, overpasses, all sorts of stuff. This was like not out of the norm. Right? So you're just getting their opinion based on what they know. And they're going to give you the best opinion they can based on the information that they have. And then you get to make the decision you want out of it. I think that we're giving people power where we shouldn't be, you know, so and yes, people thought I was absolutely crazy. But then they started to get behind it cause I started tell them what, you know, what I was doing and what we were going to have, especially when they walked in, said, oh he's never gonna walk again. Speaker 3: (12:30) I go, well, Huh. You know, he had a crushed heel. And I said, well what if Kobe Bryant were in this bed cause I'm pretty sure that you would be doing everything possible. So that's what we're going to do. And you know, then they told me he was in the second hospital, which was a rehab hospital. And they told me that you know, there was a swimming pool and they go in there. They go, oh he's not ready for that. And there was a gym and I would sneak into the gym with him and do stuff and they get mad at me. So then I got to t I got a little furlough where I got to take them out for four hours. So we took them to an Olympic size pool. We took a video of him swimming perfectly through this pool. Then we took him to the gym, and then I took the video of him doing all this workout stuff at the gym. And I said, he wants to be challenged. Human beings need to be challenged. They, you know, that's how we actually get stronger. We don't get stronger by doing a little less than what we're capable of. We get stronger by being pushed beyond what we think we're capable of. And that's what we have to do. Speaker 2: (13:34) I mean, that is just absolutely amazing. I mean, well, I had all this opposition when I was in the hospital that she would not even live for a few weeks even when she was stabilized. And that she would never, I would never be able to care for her. And I just, I, I was determined to take her home like this, you know, once they said, look, she's not improving, she's never going to do anything again. You have to put her in this, you know, a hospital institution. And I really fought tooth and nail to get her home and to get a little bit of support. So with caregivers in the morning for an hour and just, you know, for personal cares and some time out because she was 24, seven around the clock here and the, they would not give me the resources that I need. I had to really, really fight. Speaker 2: (14:23) And this is one of the important points that I've heard you make before too, and then abuse it. I've listened to did you have to really advocate for your loved one? You can go and, and you've, you're fighting against not only the, the, the accident or the aneurysm or you know, the, the results of that you're filing against the system that if you don't be a pushy, quite, you know, strong person. I mean, I'm, I'm lucky. I'm like, you, I don't really care if people don't like me when it comes to my mum, you know, like, I wouldn't Speaker 2: (15:00) Like a, a lot of, you know, oh, she's said pushy daughter. She's very forceful. You know, she's here again, me, I'm sure they hated me. And, and did not believe that I could do any of this. And I actually, at one stage, I remember going in and throwing my other two books at the doctor and saying, this is who I am and I am not putting my mom in a home and you better get used to it. You better give me what I need. And he still wouldn't, you know. So then I'm walking up brother, and who's very big man, and we got results. What we needed. You do, what ever you take to, to give your loved one the best chance possible. And you know, like with, with you taking grant into the gym and seeing, isn't it a, isn't it a beautiful feeling to actually get them out of the hospital situation and finally into some way like a gym or swimming pool surrounded with, with athletes and people that are actually all about improving themselves rather than being in a rehabilitation place where that's what I found that, you know, when she was surrounded by other young athletes training hard, she rose to the next Speaker 3: (16:15) Well think about, you know, what we know about obesity, that's super interesting. As they, you know, the studies in the U s about obesity being contagious, you catch it from your friends that you will tend to weigh what your closest friends way, even if they live across the country. And so one of the classic things I say when someone says, all right, well now I've gotten healthy and fit, how do I stay that way? I go find fit friends. So, you know, grant, when we took them, we took them out of the hospital after four and a half months earlier than they wanted us to. And then we had them in a Rehab Center for another month, but then I took them out of that, brought them home and I brought them to a training center that is the Athletic Training Center for that area. And they are amazing what they do. There are all sorts of, you know, like rope training, balance training power, like really cool stuff. And that's what we had them doing. And he's still now doing it to this day, like all sorts of crazy balanced stuff and you know, climbing and ropes and that kind of stuff that, you know, again, the average person won't do much less. Someone with rods in their thighs and, you know, he had ac joint problems, all sorts of stuff. And like Speaker 2: (17:37) He's fine, he's fine and he's fighting back. And did you with a brain injury? Did you have to teach grant everything from scratch again or did he start like with mum, it took me 18 months to teach mum just to roll over and bead, you know, it was that she couldn't push a button or she couldn't sit like she was completely floppy and no special awareness. Did grant have those issues as well? Speaker 3: (18:05) Yeah, that's very interesting. So grant was in a coma for a couple of weeks and I thought like in the movies, you know, in the movies someone's in a coma and then one day they wake up and they go, hi, I love you. So that is like shame on those movies. This does not happen this way. We, he didn't wake up from that coma overnight. It happened over time and a lot of time. And we basically got to start all over again at, first of all he did was stare off into space. He wouldn't make eye contact and you moved one arm has only thing that was in a cast. He moved one arm back and forth all day every day. And I was like, Oh, you know, and then we'd sleep off and on and then then you started, you know, being able to make eye contact. Then he started. Then one day I wasn't there at the time, which is so sad. His girlfriend came in and he said, I love you. And so he just, things started to come out, but we had to start all over again with teaching them how to brush his teeth, how to eat, how to go to the bathroom. He knew none of this, none of it. So it was quite like, it was like raising a very big, a 16 year old baby. Speaker 2: (19:16) Yeah. I had a 74 year old baby and they don't think very well. Speaker 3: (19:20) Yeah. Right. It's not a, it's very different. Speaker 2: (19:24) And, and, and this is what people don't quite understand is the dates of the rehabilitation. Every time you get something back, you realize there's another deficit that you haven't thought of. Yeah. You haven't come up against that problem until that one is sort of right. Right. Speaker 3: (19:37) That one installed and you're like, oh no, now they're going to get up. And they can't gonna have any balance. Oh, now that they want to get up, now they've got to go. You know, it's like, yeah. Every single thing was, Speaker 2: (19:49) Was relearning and retraining the brain. Now you were very, in a very lucky situation, you hit some of the world's top doctors and brain doctors like Dr. Daniel Amen. Who's amazing. They supported you through the students. [inaudible] Yeah, most of them don't have such amazing friends, if you like. And the opportunity to get the information that you needed. I want to go a little bit into the, like the supplementation side of things and then get into hyperbaric because hyperbaric is something that we both did. And I know with my mom, it was absolute key factor in her recovery. Can you tell us what your nutritionist, you're an amazing nutritionist, triple board certified, you know, everything about the right foods. What's wrong with the stuff that they give you in the hospital? Speaker 3: (20:41) Things grant said was, you know, when they tried to give him hospital food was disgusting. And I was like yeah, I made a point, especially at the first hospital, the second hospital had better food, but the first hospital had just the typical, it was a county hospital and it was all processed. It was horrible. Honestly. It was like ensure and white bread and I mean just horrible stuff. And he needed wholefoods. He needed you know, good and mega threes, he needed lots of vegetables. There was none, there was nothing there to be had. And so I made a point of bringing and it was a pain in the bucks. His hospital's parking lot was under construction, so I'd end up parking anywhere from a mile to two miles away every single day. And it wasn't in a great neighborhood. So sometimes this would be like six in the morning, nine at night. Speaker 3: (21:38) So it was like, I look at me, I don't, I don't know how the heck I would do this and I would bring a cooler bag of stuff cause there was nowhere to store it there. There was no fridge or freezer or anything else I could use. And so I would just bring this stuff in and I'd make him me smoothies where I'd put fish oil in and Greens and load him up with supplements that he needed. Cause my gosh, when you're healing like that, he had 13 fractures and your brain is healing. You need to be, have heavy duty nutrient dense food and supplements like you don't, this is when you need the most of it. And the last thing you should be doing is eating white flour and you know, bad fats and sugar. Like are you kidding me? You know, we don't want to waste calories here. We've got to make every single thing counts. So I was getting wild salmon and bone Brah and Avocados. I mean I was just loading him up with stuff and thankfully once he started to eat he was a pretty good eater. But you know, at first it was mainly smoothies. Speaker 2: (22:41) Yeah, a new triple a was my best friend. That was a thing I could get into mum cause she could only draw. And this is really, really important that you talk about fish oils and there's a whole lot of other supplements that can really help with brain health. And this is not general knowledge. This is I did CBD oils. I did you know, fish oils anything that was anti-inflammatory, tumeric and things like this. What are some of the secret sauce things, if you like that you grant, and I know you hit them on high doses of fish oil. Speaker 3: (23:20) Well, high dose fish oil was definitely the biggest one that we did. They wouldn't let us do it right away. Now, here's what I would say is prior to the accident he was doing five grams of fish oil a day. I believe that that was one of the key things that helped him get through this because it protects your brain. You never know when your brain is going to get injured, right? And if you've got that on to begin with before it happens, you're going to be in better shape. So he had an on board to begin with. Then as soon as I could, the hospital refused to give him more than two grams. So as soon as he took out his feeding tube, which he spit out himself, then I started in. And so that's how I got the fish oil up. Speaker 3: (24:04) Cause I gave this the hospital, the studies and they refused. And the next thing I did was make sure that he had a lot of protein on board and good amino acids because, and that's why something like bone broth or adding Collagen, you need all of that so he can, he can heal. He had all these broken bones, he had so much healing to do and he was sarcopenia. Q had been catabolic from you know, being coma and then not moving and then being on a feeding tube. So I kicked his, his protein way up and I was giving him also these really good amino acids. Super you know, bioavailable. And then a lot of, I did vitamin D. Um, I couldn't give him k cause he was on Warfarin, which you know, it was a little bit, I just gave him vitamin D and then I gave him trying to think about curcumin Acetylcarnitine a ton of brain nutrients like I just through the brain nutrient book at him at the time CBD wasn't out yet. Speaker 3: (25:10) So it wasn't a thing. Otherwise I would absolutely do that. I gave him progesterone and topical progesterone and I don't know, cause the studies, I did it based on Donald's Donald Donald Stein's work out of Emory university on how they saw that reduce brain inflammation. I don't know if it did or not, but here's the thing, like, you know, people ask what worked and I go, I don't know cause I did everything I possibly could and I figured I did things based on what was the pathway, how would it work and what's the risk versus what's the reward, the risk. We're so low on progesterone versus the potential reward, you know, same with like Fischel. There's no, there's no risk there. The rewards way bigger. So I, that's how I just started dosing. Everything is risk versus reward. When we got him out of the hospital, then I could start hyperbaric. Speaker 3: (26:01) We did multiple rounds of stem cells. I think five rounds of, of stem cells. We thread doing stem cells straight into a spine. Wow. And we did a lot of neurofeedback and a lot of exercise, a lot of bringing, like to me, if you to pick one thing that is the most under and has the biggest impact, it's exercise, it raises something called BDNF Alpha. It's going to help you create, you know, create a new brain so to speak. So super important fact that yeah, this is, this is really important. Oh yeah. Yeah. One other thing we did obviously first in the hospital was to and then I wrote to him on this a couple times. Obviously, you know, sugar and gluten are gone, but we had him on a ketogenic diet because when you have a brain injury, your brain can't get glucose in, but it can use ketones for fuel. So, and you can use you can use exotic genus ketones if you have an issue not being able to do that where you're at, like based on what they're feeding. So there's other ways to do it, but that's what we did. Speaker 2: (27:11) Yeah. And those are all really important things. So exalted in as keen t times you can get and things like that. MCT Oils and Speaker 3: (27:18) Yup. Oh, an MCT oil. Yes, we use that. And coffee. You know, coffee has helped him a lot too. So coffee, MCT oil, lot of healthy fats, a lot of fish. Doesn't really, sugar doesn't eat gluten Speaker 2: (27:35) And, and all these things. And this is one of the things that I've, you know, cause I get asked a lot too, what was the one thing that you did it, it's a multifaceted approach. There's no, there's no silver bullet. Speaker 3: (27:50) There is one. Lisa, there is one silver bullet and I think this is the most important part of this story is the most important thing that you did was to make this decision that you are going to do everything you possibly could to help her. And relentless and to do what it takes. And that's the decision I made that night in the hospital. And I think the important takeaway is when you make that decision, there's the most important thing that you have in your arsenal in order to pull that off is you. And in order for you to help your mom come back, the thing you have to do before all else is make sure that you, you put yourself in your health first, that when you think about caretaking, you're the first person you take care of because you cannot help someone else unless you are like at the top of your game. And this is a tremendous amount of stress. And I find with so many people, they just stopped taking care of themselves. So super duper important when you look at this to take care of yourself first. Never feel guilty about it. It's actually selfless to do it. Not Selfish because then you can really show up like you need to. Speaker 2: (29:00) Yeah. Is, and that's something I probably didn't do too well for the first couple of years and ended up quite sick myself. And, and you know, it was its own journey, but that's a really important point because when you, you're, you pouring in, you're giving all the time, every day, all day. You know, I still work with my mum seven hours a day, even though like now she's driving the car and got a full driver's license and walking and doing everything again, I'm still like, you're like, I want that 110%. Speaker 3: (29:29) Oh goodness. At this point of what she went through and how far she's come. Speaker 2: (29:34) He has no recollection of the first 19 months. And so she can't believe. And I, you know, I show her the videos and the little, you know, photos and stories that we've got and she's just like, Nah, that's, that's, you know, I, I can't remember any of that. Or I was like, you're very lucky. You don't really cause it was horrific and it's really horrific to look at the, in the eyes of your loved one and they don't know who you are and they don't know what's happening to them. And then to actually see them come back into, be like fully like your whole personalities. The same. She's intelligent woman again. You know, it's just so wonderful. I remember the first time my mum actually rang me on the phone after, I don't know, a year and a half or something and I was just crying my eyes out because she'd worked out how to use the phone, you know, and she could, you know, just the little things like that, you just know, oh, this is working. Speaker 2: (30:28) And she's coming back. And the, the biggest thing I found too was that on the day to day grind, because it is a grind, it's a day to day battle of training that you, you don't see the progress often for months at a time. You will see nothing happening and things are happening on the cellular level, but you don't see them. And this is where most people give up in that time when you're in a plateau. And if you can push through that, then you can look back and all of a sudden you have another, you know, another little jump in your abilities. And you'd get something back and you'd look back and how far you've come. But when you measuring it on a day to day basis, you're not actually Speaker 3: (31:09) Never, you know, I say this to grant now because he's made some tremendous strides and he doesn't see it. I go, because grant, you don't go out and look at the grass everyday and go, wow, look how much the grass grew from today. But if you went out and looked at the grass f not cutting it for two weeks, you'll look at the grass. Holy Moly. So I go, you cannot, you're going to have to take my word for it. And people who are like seeing you once a week or once a month, you're never going to see this ever. And that's really how life is. Like, you know, everyone wants to have that success. They see the person with the bestselling book or you know, win the race and they think that that just happened and they don't see the grind. And so to me, the paralleling life life is a grind and it's a little consistency every single day that create what we see. Like, people look at grant, I'm sure they're looking at your mom and they go, it's a miracle. I go, it was really flipping grind. Speaker 2: (32:10) A lot of miracle is fricking hard work. It is. And, and this is something that fascinated me with your story too because okay, I'm not as, as amazingly successful as you are. And but you had to continue your career. You keep writing your books. I remember you saying, you know, sitting on the side of your son's bed and trying to get your needs, you, your book out, which was at that very same time sort of thing. And Speaker 3: (32:36) I remember a sweet woman wrote in, posted on my Facebook page and she goes, don't worry about your job. It will be waiting for you. And I thought, yeah no app won't actually the New York publishers, that will be that, you know, it's like I have a, I have a book, I have everything invested in it. If it doesn't go, I will not get another book deal and I'll be bankrupt and then I will not be able to take care of my son. And so, you know, I don't have a job waiting for me. I run my own business. If I'm not there, it's not happening. And so there wasn't that option. There just was that, that realization that if I want my son to be 110%, I'm going to need to be even more successful because this is not free. You know? And a lot of this stuff that you do, like hyperbaric [inaudible] never covered that stem cells insurance never covered that. Speaker 3: (33:33) You know? So it's like, so many of the things that I was doing, insurance just didn't cover. You know, we had he had heavy metal poisoning from some of the stuff and insurance didn't cover that. I mean, just thing after thing after thing. Right. So it, you know, you just, you just do it. You have to do. And it's amazing what we have a capacity to do, you know? Yes. And I, I think for so many people, they're not where they want to be in life because they make success optional. And it wasn't optional here. Right. I mean, in order for me to do what I needed to do for my son, success was no longer an option. It was required in order for me to have what I needed to be able to take him, get him what he needed. And so that was that. Speaker 2: (34:24) Yeah. And you had to stay absolute. This is where the mindset stuff really, really kicks in. And I think because you know both you know, running your own companies and you, you have a huge city successful empire now, but it's the combination and years and years and years of work. And if you dropped the ball for five minutes, when you run your own company, that can be the, you know, it's, that cycle wasn't, as I said difficult to coordinate all this stuff. So you have to, I would have to work with mum all day and then I would come home at eight o'clock at night and work til one in the morning in. This is where I burnt out of course working on my businesses and then, you know, wake up at six in the morning and re repeat rinse. And repeat for day in, day out, seven days a week for the last, you know, four years nearly. Speaker 2: (35:17) In prior to that, it wasn't exactly not working either. You know, like you were still working like mad and it costs a lot of money to rehabilitate someone. I mean, we, we didn't have a hyperbaric er clinic over here at all, so I had to go into commercial dive company and begged them to be able to use their their chambers. And then I got xs for a little while and then it had to be taken off on a contract. So I had to mortgage the House and buy a hyperbaric chamber, a mild one. And then I actually opened up a clinic because I was such a success. Speaker 3: (35:50) Of course you did because you're an entrepreneur. Exactly. Speaker 2: (35:54) And I want to be able to have access to this planet. I'm so good on now. So someone else's running it, but people have access to it. And hyperbaric as a, as one of the key things that I just do not understand why it's not an every hospital in every country of the world. Why this is not often for so many things is because I know no lemon drug money behind it. And this is just tragic for so many people that could be helped by this amazing therapy if they would take it, you know, have enough treatments. So there's a lot of things wrong with the system, not only in America, but in New Zealand. So what would be your advice to people if they're facing something like a brain injury or anything in the hospital if they've got a loved one? How do you know, how do people, I mean, we have access to the Internet. We have resources. We know how to research. We know how to, you know, take action. A lot of people listen to the doctors, either experts and just leave it all up to them. That really isn't gonna work as it. Speaker 3: (37:00) So the doctors, the hospital saved my son's life. And literally put him back together again. And I think what we do wrong here is that we, they are, they're amazing at trauma. And at that piece of it, what they weren't, and they told me they go, this is not our part. We don't do the Rehab. We don't do this piece. They are in the urgent emergent here. Like these bones are broken. The say orders rupture. Like what, what do we need to do? And so just making sure that you're, like, for some reason we think of say a emergency room doctor is not where I would absolutely go if my son broke his leg is not the person I would go to if my son's moods were unstable or if he, you know, didn't have the energy he needed to have. Like we're going, we're assuming that they do everything. Speaker 3: (37:57) And when you really look at it, that is this trauma care, you know, and there's trauma care and then there's disease care and then there's health care or wellness care and there are all different things. But yet we go to two doctors expecting like expecting them to have all the answers, which doesn't make any sense. You'd never go to a gynecologist with a tooth problem. Right. You know, I mean it just, you wouldn't go to your hairstylist for a manicure. Like let's, let's put people ask the right things of the right people because in their zone of genius, like it's amazing. I mean, my son wouldn't be here except for some of these amazing at Harbor UCLA and at Children's Hospital La, you know, I mean they were just incredible. But then we expect them to all of a sudden change gears and do a part of medicine that's not their part. Speaker 3: (38:47) And I'd argue that health care really, you know, the wellness side of it probably isn't, that's not where they should even, that's not their part, their parts trauma and disease. Right. Those are different. So I think the first part of all of this though is just making that decision that you're going to be an advocate for your or your loved one. And I know in the hospital they were like, oh my gosh, cause I'd be there every morning when the grand rounds came through and I was doing my research and I was pulling in my expert opinions and I was getting help and I was, and I was walking through and I wanted to understand it. And I have every right to do that, you know, and, and guess what, we have the right to ask for more information to question things, to bring in other ideas. Speaker 3: (39:36) We can do that. They don't, you know, they like it though. So we, yeah. Well, you know what if someone, I actually had, I had amazing relationships with most of them. I've, I, you know, one woman who was a bit snotty. But for the most part they actually were pretty cool about all the stuff. And I finally at Children's Hospital La, the meetings, which would have all the doctors and therapists had, me too. I go, you know, I see. I know things you guys will never know because you are not the mom. Like, so I got into all the meetings and we all helped guide the care because, you know, and it was very, very different. So I think it's really coming in from a spirit of teamwork and how can we work together? If I've got a doctor who doesn't want to work with any other doctors, that is not going to be my doctor. Just like, like right now, I just moved to Tampa, we're remodeling the house. And if I'm, I, you know, we have an architect, well, if the, if the person who's going to do the construction doesn't want to work with the architect, we don't have a, we don't have anything going on. Like they're not going to work together. Right. With the doctors. Like they all have to work together. And this is just expectations and don't let someone intimidate you. You're the customer. Yes. You're exactly right. You know? Yeah. Speaker 2: (40:52) Him and I did by the, you know, I think we put doctors on a pedestal sometimes, which I mean they're amazing, you know, intellectual incredible people, but they don't always know every answer there is in, just because you don't have a doctorate doesn't mean that you haven't been able to research stuff and find the best doctors that can help you. And you've also got a brain in your head and you, and you're sitting there 24, seven or you know, your family is around the clock with that person. They can see the changes where a doctor hadn't, he has five minutes to spend with you before they move on to the next one. Speaker 3: (41:27) Quite often we can see, give them valuable. I had a son with a psych disorder with a brain injury. Yeah. And so I was like going, you know, I can tell you what's new and what's old and where like they would never have been able to tell any of that stuff and what he'd been on before and what worked and what didn't work and where we need to go from here. And I mean that it was a big learning curve and I could spot when things were starting to go sideways with them. Like I could see it right in the middle of his forehead. They could not see it. I go right now, you know, so cause we had to medicate him enough to keep him calm and stable but not so much as bring wouldn't heal. So I mean there's, there's just a lot that can happen when everyone comes as a team and you know, it comes from what I want is an Improv called the yes. And you know, instead of the yes, but philosophies. So, and that's what I found is for the most part, they all worked in the, yes. And especially when I got to children's Hospital La, they were very collaborative. They took it team approach. Everyone from the nurses to the therapist to the docs all had, you know, important things to say and it mattered. [inaudible] Speaker 2: (42:38) Well, and it's amazing that [inaudible] grant is now back into life and loving life again and fully well and like you, let's talk a little bit about your mind share summit in your, you know, the work that you do. Cause I want people to, you know, that are listening to this to follow what you do, to read your box, to hop online and learn all about you. So JJ, tell us a little bit about your mind share stuff and what you're into at the moment and where you're going with your career. Speaker 3: (43:07) Well my career I've probably got two more books that I'm going to write in the health space. Wow. one much more on how a cure a kind of a caretaker's guide to surviving and thriving. Because that's what really came out of all this with warrior mom is that this really is like we're all caretakers. And then one about really how to, how diets do work were just using them wrong and how to, how to navigate your health. Cause we don't, you know, we don't change our health. We, we haven't been feeling rotten and being sick for 10 years and now we're going to change it in 10 days. You know, it's like takes, it's a process. And what we can accomplish in anything over a year is amazing, but we all try to do it in a week and then beat ourselves up. So working on those two things. Speaker 3: (44:00) But my real passion now lies in fact that I have been fortunate over the years to know so many amazing practitioners and doctors and so I've really devoted my life to helping them identify their messages and their purpose and get that out to the world and then find other people to collaborate with. So that's what mindshare summit is, is bringing health care people, health experts, doctors help entrepreneurs together. They can share ideas, support each other collaborate, not feel alone like so many entrepreneurs do. And that's really kind of my bigger, bigger mission now is how do I help people have better resources? When I was in the hospital with grant, I had amazing resources. And you know, now that the Internet's out there, you don't have to be able to send Dr. Daniel Amen. A text message. You can now get to this information. And that's, that's what I want to see out there is more easy access to information so that when these things happen, you can just plug it in and find out. And, you know, biggest threat we have to all of that right now is, is Google and the search engines trying to dictate what you should be able to locate and find. So we're also working on that piece to make sure that, you know, this information stays open to all and it's not censored, which is so obscene. Huh? Speaker 2: (45:30) Well, yeah. Now how do we get involved with that? Can we get involved with that? You know, from New Zealand's, because I mean, I'm very passionate too about sharing this knowledge. And this is one of the reasons why I've got this book coming out is because I want people to have the tools that I didn't have when I went into this situation. Yeah. And I, I, you know, I got access to it via the Internet. You know, is there ways that we can be involved with that from New Zealand? Speaker 3: (45:57) Which one, which, you know, mind share is, is if you are a health expert doctor, entrepreneur, yes. Mindshare collaborative.com gives you a place to join. It's a membership and then within that we're working on a task force for the rest of this. Cause you know, it's like the whole thing is how do you create information that everyone has access to so that money isn't, isn't the defining line as to whether you can get healthy or not. And you know, the Internet should be the great equalizer. It shouldn't be. All of a sudden you find out that these bigger companies have grand schemes because they own pharmaceutical companies and now they're going to keep the information from you. Like it just, it just is discounted. Really. Yes. It's evil. It's evil. But I think it's, it sounds like it's going to get shut down. If not, you know, there's other options out there. That's hopefully what we get through here with this group Speaker 2: (46:56) And with the box and so on. So JJ, before, just as we wrap up as you, any messages that you want to get across that we've, we've covered a lot of ground today. I know that you've worked on, I did want to mention the broken brain series, which I've bought and, and devoured the, the work that those doctors and professionals are doing. This has been a really important thing. I think that's a huge resource. If I'd had that four years ago, we've been brilliant, you know? Speaker 3: (47:26) Yes. Oh my gosh. But mark Hyman and drew per it have put together an amazing, Mark's been a longtime friend for like 20 years. You know, he's, he's just doing incredible things. Anyone with any kind of brain stuff going on, broken brain is just incredible resource source for you know, loads of interviews, et cetera. And then drew continues with this broken brain podcast. So there's that too. Speaker 2: (47:52) It on jury's podcast. Maybe you can put on a good or on your thoughts for that, that her with the [inaudible] stories. Speaker 3: (47:58) Well, yeah, you have to be in person. You must be in La to do. Yeah. So there's that. But the point is there's a lot of resources. I think the most important thing is that first, you know, when you look at what happens in life, it isn't like a, I'll give you an example. Let's say that you want to have a new sofa in your living room. Use something as mundane as that. The first thing you have to do is envision that you want a sofa in your living room. Then you go out and find the sofa you don't like all of a sudden, you know, a sofa pops in and then you envision it. It always happens in your mind's eye first, right? Yep. So same with this. If, if, when I was facing this situation with grant, the first thing was in my mind's eye, I saw him at 110%. Speaker 3: (48:47) I saw him getting through this. Now anywhere along the line, something could have happened. He nearly died multiple times, but I knew that I was doing everything humanly possible and beyond that to help him get there. And that's what I, you know, that's what I could do. I could manage my mindset and do everything possible on my, on my end to do that. And I think that's really important is we create it first in our mind. Thoughts create. It's very powerful. It's amazing what we can do. So manage your mindset because it's the first thing that you have control over that and commit and make a decision into the situation and always push past what you think is possible. Which was why I said 110%, you know, versus Oh, I just want grant to be alive. Grant just being alive could have been grant in a wheelchair unable to talk or see or hear or anything. So, you know, go for it, go big for it and then go for the resources to make it happen. Speaker 2: (49:50) Well I think that's a beautiful place to wrap it up. JJ, thank you so much for being such a warrior for being such an a fantastic mum. And being such an amazing role model for other people going through these, these sorts of journeys takes for all the work you do in this area with broken brain, with, with all the books that you have out with the nutrition stuff that you do. We can people find you online and buy bio books and know more about JJ. Speaker 3: (50:21) Pretty easy. JJ Virgin, www.jjvirgin.com. Speaker 2: (50:29) Fantastic. Thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. And I wish you son grant and Bryce of course all the best in the future and it'd be amazing to see what they do with the, with your mom too. She's got a, she's super lucky to have you as a daughter, Huh? He's a beautiful mom. I'll send you a book when it comes out. And yeah, it's, it's very special stories. Both of these and these stories are really important to share because it gives other people hope. And the biggest piece of the puzzle we've heard today is your mindset. And they never ever give up and that you throw everything in to the pot. You can't the universe, but you can control what you do. I think that was the biggest takeaway from today. I very much enjoyed today. Thank you. 

With Coach Sarah still on vacation, Coach MK flies solo in a powerful episode that will start your week off RIGHT (despite Uranus in retrograde)! This week's questions include the physiological benefits of strides or accelerators, needing to push heart rate higher, sickled feet and what to do, moving the long run around, the deeper meaning of the EAT, and Coach MK hits her inbox to respond to a question about potential. This short-but-sweet episode is one you will NOT want to miss!   ReBuild 1. What is the physiological benefit of the triple decker? If I'd rather do an EE

So, as I've said, my name is Joshua Lewis, I'm from Dorks Delivered, and I’ve got another company called Business Efficiency Experts. Business Efficiency Experts has been around for about five years, and Dorks Delivered for 12 years, so we've been going around for quite a bit. We started off as an IT company, and then we found that there was more of a need for businesses to be utilising technology better. Since then I've started writing as a columnist for my entrepreneur magazine, I've been featured on news.com.au, and soon to be published in every entrepreneurs guide focusing on your marketing. Learn more about technology, marketing and business management at https://dorksdelivered.com.au/blog/451-brisbane-tattersalls-special-episode Time to Talk About Your Business Today I'm going to be talking about your business, more than my business. So what I want to do is found out, who here is representing their own business. Yup. So who here is not, and here on someone else's behalf? Okay. So we just got one here, that's right, always the bloody troublemaker. It's going to be a very interactive session with the way we're going to go through with everything, and we're going to split off into groups and it's going to be fun, it's going to be exciting. Are we pumped? Yeah? Look, we've got to annoy the other groups. Yeah? Woo. Okay, perfect. Raise your hand if you have kids? I already know Carolyn has kids, and we've got Amanda with kids, so a lot of us have kids here, which is good. I'm lucky enough not to. But I've got 10 nieces and nephews, and treat them like my own. Who here would say they spend enough time with their kids? Who is there for all their critical moments in their life? Who would rather spend more time, or have at least the flexibility to be able to step in and out? I was talking to Tony, I was talking about some of the automation, or some of the things that he's put into his business which allow for better time management. And in particular we were talking about some of the Lean Management, which is fantastic, and I will be touching on that for some of it. Who started their business to earn money? Yeah. What did everyone else start it for? Who started their business to have more freedom? So we've got a few hands. It's nearly 50/50. Who believes that they've achieved both goals in that they're earning money and they can step in an out of the office at any time? Ideally we're going to split into three groups. I want everyone to have a think about what your time is worth per hour. I'm going to start and go around the room. Carolyn, what would you say your time is worth per hour? Carolyn: $350. Joshua Lewis: $350. Peta? Peta: I can't value. It's... Time is invaluable. Joshua Lewis: Invaluable. Time spent is worthwhile. Tony, how about yourself? Tony: Probably $2,50. Joshua Lewis: $2,50. That's good, that brings your averages back here. Tracey? Tracey: I don't know what it's worth but I charge $450 an hour. Joshua Lewis: Okay. And if we just continue around the room. I didn't actually get your name, sorry. Amelia: Oh, Amelia. Joshua Lewis: Amelia. Amelia: About $150 an hour. Joshua Lewis: Okay, is that what you're charging or what you think your time is worth? Amelia: Roughly about what I charge. Joshua Lewis: Okay, no worries. Melody: I charge between $200 and $300 an hour. Joshua Lewis: It gets wishy-washy, doesn't it? Amanda: So I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Joshua Lewis: That's okay. So has anybody been adding up the totals? I haven't been, but we're going to go back around with a more solid answer and everyone's saying what everyone's said. I'd say everyone's roughly saying what, two, three hundred dollars an hour, yeah? And it's about like what, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 of us in the room. So there's about $3,000 an hour being spent in this room right now, and for my talk that's going to go for 20, 25 minutes, it means you're spending roughly about $1,000 to $1,500 to listen to me, so thanks guys! I appreciate that and I'm going to make sure your time is spent well. I like that! If your business went down, how much would that cost you? A lot of people don't really take that into effect. We were talking before with Mark from ETG, a fantastic person who makes sure that businesses stay up and running, he's going to be answering the phone within 30 seconds. You know that your business is going to be able to stay alive and stay up and running, which is what you want. You don't want to have downtime, you don't want to have those problems. But people do have downtime, people get pregnant, people go on holidays, get sick, people change jobs, die, pass away, all these different terrible things and nice things that can happen. Ultimately it means you have more problems in trying to cope with the amount of hours that are either coming in or with hours that are going out, depending on the person that's disappeared. Either way, your business needs automation. Automation is super important, because if you can automate elements of your business, you no longer have to have those employees doing those repetitious tasks. So I'm going to go through and go around the room and ask everyone what their pain point is in business, and what they are wanting to overcome, and then I'm going to explain different ways that you can go about doing that using automation. So I'm going to start the other way around and start with Amanda first. Amanda: Uh, so I don't need a lot of staff in my office but when that one staff member is not there, it's an issue. Joshua Lewis: What do your staff predominantly focus on? Amanda: So the pain point... Oh well, it would be answering phones and answering emails. Joshua Lewis: Okay, and at the moment how many employees do you have? Amanda: Well, out on the field there's 15, and in the office... we're kind of in a vortex at the moment, there only needs about one to one and a half. Joshua Lewis: And that can be a problem because you're at that stage where if you have one and then you grow to two, you have to have twice as much work for people to answer the phones or they're costing heaps of money. Amanda: Yes. Joshua Lewis: So it's a good answer. What would you say your biggest pain point is in business? Melody: I'm a consultant so people... I'd say filling in tenders. There're so many different formats out there and it would be nice if they were standardised from your perspective. Joshua Lewis: Absolutely. Melody: It would help to standardise them so consulting with companies that are putting and that are filling in those tenders are spending less in [inaudible 00:06:08] because at the end of the day, translate in dollars for each individual out here of resource cost. Joshua Lewis: Makes a lot of sense and IT is one the industries that they haven't really standardised yet. A lot of the civil industries they have standardised tenders, but not in IT. And knowingly there's a lot of... it seems that there's not much legislation around IT, which is annoying to know who's good and who's a cowboy, etc. How about you Brendan? Brendan: Probably managing emails. Joshua Lewis: Managing emails? So how many emails do you get a day? Brendan: Last time I counted, probably about 360. Joshua Lewis: Yeah, that's a lot, that's a lot of time. Continue around, is anyone also relating to some of these problems? Does anybody have anything to be different to these that you'd say is a big problem that you'd have in business? I know you're only just starting out so that's... Brendan: Yes, my widest pain point is to bring awareness to some [inaudible 00:06:56], so making awareness, that would be my pain point. Joshua Lewis: Okay, and definitely that could be somebody getting your name out, they're getting your brand out, they're having people know about you, and especially you're in a marketing company but you need to still get yourself marketed out there, so it's a bit of a conundrum. Does anyone else have any different pain points that they would...? Yeah, Peta? Peta: Hi, organising customers to meet their deadlines. Joshua Lewis: Okay, and how many customers do you have that you find where you run into that problem with? Peta: 80% Joshua Lewis: 80%, that's a lot. Okay. So, are you one of them? Amanda: No. Joshua Lewis: Well that's not good. Amanda: An automatic puncher would be good. Joshua Lewis: Yeah, that's right. Well people getting paid is a huge pain point. I'm surprised no-one bought that up. People lapsing on invoices or waiting for invoices to get paid. Amanda: I have an automatic solution. Joshua Lewis: Are you using Zero or? Amanda: I'm using Zero integrated with Integripay. Joshua Lewis: Yeah, cool. So we also have Zero integrated with Integripay, so word up to the solution. Amanda: I don't have customers that owe me money, so I take it from them. Joshua Lewis: Yeah, and do you only deal with customers that you can set up directive requests with? Amanda: Yes. Yeah, cool. So that's a level of automation that you've put into your business, which is awesome. It overcomes that pain. So I'm going to try to go around the room and answer some of the questions. At the moment there's heaps of different places that you can jump onto that give you the ability to have a very scalable per call call centre where they can be answering five calls a day or 500 calls a day, and you can pay a very small amount per call. Now although that's not necessarily automating the calls being answered, that's offsetting the responsibilities allowing growth. Which the problem isn't really your calls not being answered as far as I can see, it's the growth and having to bring someone on having extra tasks that need to be allocated to that person. So we went to a solution where we found the same issue. So our business started off as an IT company very similar to Michael's but different, and we found by automating so much of the business, 98% of it was being done in the back of house and we didn't have any customers talking to us, which is great but it meant that we then had to have so much work to have one person sitting there answering the phones or have the technicians being interrupted while they're doing other work. We found there's solutions, one's called Call Assist and that we use all Euron CRM systems, Euron training manuals, the whole lot, and they can just sit there and answer the phone for you as part of your business. So would that overcome your problem?   Amanda: Yeah. Joshua Lewis: Woo! Amanda: Yay! Big clap, that's great! Hey, one down! So I'm just going to go through some of my other notes here. As I said I didn't really get to rehearse or do this. This is all off the cuff right now. So more freedom. See automation doesn't stop at the office. You need to make sure that the things that you're doing around the home aren't being wasted, your time isn't being wasted there as well. Who mows their lawn or has a lawn to mow? Yeah? No lawns? You have lawns, have you been mowing your lawns yet? Brendan: I mow the lawn, yes. Joshua Lewis: Yeah. And... Brendan: I'm thinking of astro turf Joshua Lewis: Not a bad idea. Tony: I'm just trying to think, for a weekend... you're away from the family. But it depends on how much you like your family. If you're able to do it with a beer in your hand, you can get a ride-on or something. Well I found that definitely things like mowing the lawn you can outsource that stuff, pruning the gardens, you can outsource that stuff. There's always different ways to repurpose the systems that you're using at home, the way that you're utilising your kids if you've got kids, to make sure that you're automating as much as possible so that the time you are spending with them is valuable time. Because if everyone's time here, as you worked out, is worth about $300 an hour, the time that you're spending at home is worth the same amount as the time that you're spending at work. You shouldn't be changing the dollar amount because you're at home. If your time is worth $300 at work, you shouldn't be mowing the lawn and taking an hour to do that. You can pay someone $60 to do that every two weeks and they'll mow the lawn and do all the things that you need to have done. And that's where you need to really make sure that your time is important. So automation isn't just about technology, it's about putting in place solutions and peoples and procedures to make sure that people are doing the jobs for you and you're not having to stress that maybe you have a big week, a big month at work, or you go away traveling and then you come home and the lawn's up here, and if you're a lawn connoisseur, which I am, that means I say I like grass but it's not what it means at all... Anyway, if you are a lawn connoisseur and then you have the grass grow up, it just completely destroys off the whole ecosystem in the lawn, creates too much shade and all these other different problems, and that lawn analogy goes into every aspect of your life. There should be always ways to make your business and your life better. So Carolyn was saying that she's using a product that helps her out with LinkedIn, but it's not helping her out right now with LinkedIn because the automation behind it is broken. But we've all said roughly, again just using rough numbers, our per hour rate is about $300 an hour. For $8 an hour you can get a virtual assistant online that would be sitting there looking at it, monitoring it and doing anything else, and that goes for your emails as well. For $8 an hour and they don't even have to be employed full-time, you can have them doing that. Some people are for and against outsourcing. Who's for outsourcing and who's...? Yeah? That's the majority. Who's against outsourcing? So why don't you like outsourcing? f there's no outsourcing, your IT company wouldn't exist. Brendan: Because when I was outsourcing for the Indian company and I got to a customer site, they want to pay in Indian dollars and I've got to make a living here. And also I'm looking at... you know you've got to balance books, billing the capability here or are you going to destroy the capability here and is this going to manufacture offshore everything? So then I had this dream one day and "Hey what will my kids do if we end up pushing all the manufacturing offshore, pushing all the IT development offshore, what will people do?" So we need to find a balance where you know this is like "We will go forward..." Joshua Lewis: Absolutely! Brendan: There's less crime... People need some kind of motivation in life to get up and do something in life. That's absolutely right! And most of us are operating a small business. Does anyone have more than 15 employees here? Yeah, so the big thing with automation is if you're running a one man shop and you're able to automate some of your tasks, even if you've got two or three or five people and you're able to automate some of your tasks or axe off some of those tasks, those tasks are giving you time to be able to focus on bringing in new business as opposed to giving you... where you're just spending a mundane task going through 350 emails in a day. If you know that they're being categorised into most important, middle important and least important, which I discussed in a podcast on our Business for Freedom podcast channel, you're able to think "Okay, this is important." Only spend 15 minutes in the morning and then one 15-minute break at lunch and then know exactly how much you're spending. If you're able to outsource the majority of it, although you are still creating wealth over there and you are outsourcing some of the dollars, it's a job that you wouldn't have been able to afford to outsource here. And don't outsource and go for the cheapest bidder, go for the person that understands your business, understands the model and you're not undercutting everyone. Eight dollars, US, an hour is someone that is going to go to do the work that you want them to do and normally where they're getting paid, they're getting paid significantly less than that. So you're still helping out them and they're giving you more time to get to grow your business which lets you employ more people locally, which is ultimately what you want to be able to do. All of us as business owners need to be the best salesperson at what you're doing, although it's a dirty word and no-one likes salesperson, we're the most passionate people about what we do. And so you need to be able to be there in front of people, which is the problem that you are having, be there in front of people so that people can hear your story and hear how passionate you are. When I started in business, I was introverted, overweight and did not want to talk to anyone. But your business doesn't work very well like that, and so my extrovertedness has come as a learned behaviour. After losing 38 kilos, it was easy to learn the behaviour, I will be honest, but it's definitely a learned behaviour. But you need to be in front of people because that's where things start to happen, where things really start to show. And if you're there reading emails or buggering around with LinkedIn and other stuff, you're not going to be able to be in front of the people to make a difference. Does that all make sense? Does anyone have any questions around that? A team is the most important aspect. As soon as you go from a single man band to a woman band to a larger team, that's when you really need to start investing in the right people. The News.Com interview that I did was on selecting the right candidates and filtering out any of the crap that you get on Seek, and it's definitely a process. You want to make sure you've got a team of unicorns that work together with your business to help your business grow into the future, and it sounds really wishy-washy but knowing that they're able to do things, and some people don't employ... because they go "Ah, they don't know what I know. I've been in business too long. I know everything that I'm doing and I'm just so good at it." The problem is, you are, and that means that you won't find someone like you. But if you're able to find someone that does 80% of the work and they're 80% of the way there, that's only 20% that you have to do. And as they grow with you, it becomes easier and they become your right-hand man or lady, or left-wing lady or right-hand man, and that's where you want to make sure your systems are growing as well with the people. You want to make sure you're documenting down your processes, it doesn't matter what size business you're in. I started off in business by myself, two years later got my first employee, thought this is amazing, and continued through. Two years after that we're going gangbusters. I was turning over more money that I could ever do. I was doing a lot of big contracts with Education Queensland. The problem came about when my offsider, as a 27-year-old and working 65 to 70-hour weeks at a stroke, and that then meant I was inundated, had to cancel contracts and it was shit spot to be at in business. I grew way too quickly and that's the same sort of dilemma that you're having, where do you put someone on and waste a whole bunch of money until they grow up, or do you just grow with the one person and then when you're too busy, not have time to train someone, which is another dilemma. But automating the on-boarding process is as simple as writing down every single task that you do per day in business, writing it in your daily list, your weekly list, your monthly list. I've got this exact process written out when I started doing it a number of years ago, there was 500 items on the list and I thought "My God, I have to go through 500 things. I'm doing 500 things at the moment. How am I going to do this?" And like eating an elephant just one bite at a time, and I've got anything on there from how do you go about replacing your coffee filters to how do you answer the phone to anything... how to onboard a customer, how to let a customer leave, how to onboard a staff member, absolutely every single process is there. It doesn't matter what size business you're in, start documenting it down because when you can bring someone on, instead of having three or four months for them to be trained up, it's a two-week period which is automating the process, which is giving you more time to be out there finding new business and making a business better. So as an element of what we do in business and how I've automated my life and my business, I can work 10 hours a week. Of the 10 hours that I work a week, I can spend one hour a week making YouTube videos, blogs and podcasts, and that gives me enough podcasts, that's three podcasts a week, two YouTube videos a week, five blogs a week, and it's only taking me an hour to do that whole process. The other nine hours, I'm talking with existing customers and finding new business, potentially things like this, but I only need to work 10 hours a week with what I'm doing, with the way I've automated everything. Most people, if you said "I need you to write five blogs a week"... because our web guy told us it's going to get us better ranking, which it will, you won't have the time to write five blog articles in a week. But if you have it automated to a spot, we're able to do that, which we've done that through a 78-page document which details exactly how to go about doing it, we then no longer have this problem and it only takes us an hour, which is awesome. So think about what you do. What takes up heaps of time in your business? What would allow you to remove that time away from your business and have it spent with your kids and with your family, going on holidays, mowing the lawn if you love relaxing by mowing the lawn... while reflecting on it. But that's definitely what you need to sort of just hone in and try and work out, so... yeah. Any questions? There's got to be a couple of questions. Amanda: I've got a question. Joshua Lewis: Sure. Amanda: At what point did you realise what this... that you needed to do, this more automation, at what point did you realise the benefit was offsetting the cost? How did you work that out? Joshua Lewis: If I was to start my business again... when you first start your business, a lot of the time you go "Okay, I'm just waiting for a new client and I've got all this spare time." If I'd started it then, I would've seen the benefits significantly sooner. Already now, if anyone has any question in the room, I've noted it down and then I'm answering that in a podcast, YouTube video or blog. So to notice the difference, I would say, it's probably about 18 months if I had to put a number on it and that is a process of a lot of documentation, but it meant that when I went from the next staff member and everything had been documented, the staff member after that and the staff member after that and the staff member after that, I had zero training. I did the interviewing with them and then that was it. The other person that I trained up to start off with, which is when I wrote the documentation, was the person who then trained up the next batch of people, so the business over the last number of years has grown to 11 employees and I've trained up three or so of them, that would be about it. Everything else has happened through documents that have already written up which everyone hates doing and everyone agrees with that. No-one wants to write that up, yeah? You can offset that as well, so doing something as simple as just clicking record on your computer screen, you can record what's happening and then have that transcribed and outsourced. Tony, you'd have to sit down with people in meetings all the time and take notes on what they're saying and very specific particulars on potentially companies, holding companies for assets and all sorts of stuff, and have to note that all down, yeah? And what are you using to do that at the moment? Tony: I need to get clients' confidence that everything I do for them is in confidence. The last thing that I want for my space is when recording them on file, I'll use diagrams and staples and a whiteboard to explain things in a diagrammatical way and I find that they're more responsive to that. Yeah, and that file might be saved and it's accessed through the network so I can pass the job onto another staff member and they can pick up the file. Joshua Lewis: So the difference between recording it as you're dictating it onto the computer versus recording it through a digital means nowadays has become very, very blurred, especially like Alexa and Google Home and everything else already recording what we're saying all the time, one of the key words. I found a lot of the time customers are more comfortable, especially if they already know, that as you said that you've got a built-in trust with them and they then understand that what they're saying is in confidence so if they were to say something untoward, you would have that potentially written down if you really wanted to anyway. There's a fantastic tool called Otter on your phone which, if you download Otter, it'll have everything that you say, it'll dictate what you say and if we were talking together in the same conversation, it would dictate your voice and my voice separately and then it'll pick up on different key words throughout the discussion and then you can add that to a file against that customer, which then means if you had... if we were to catch up and I was talk about some of the R&D stuff that I'm doing and I was talking about the trust distribution that we have and all the different models of our business, and he went "I know we caught up with Josh a year ago and I can't remember exactly what he said", this not only transcribes the whole lot, but transcribes it and adds key words and notes that are completely searchable down to the exact moment things were said, and it's completely free for 10 hours a month, so a pretty cool tool. Amelia: What's it called? Otter? Joshua Lewis: Otter, like the animal. Amelia: Yeah, it's a cool app. Joshua Lewis: Otter.ai is the name, it's on Apple. Amelia: Is that spelt correctly? Joshua Lewis: Yeah, yeah, like the animals that hold hands when they go to sleep. Yeah, so that would definitely help out a lot of businesses that have no taking... I would imagine that would help you out as well when you're trying to sort of key around different mortgages and how they want things to work and where income's coming from and how they can offset different expenses, and so it's an invaluable tool. But there's all these tools out there that can really help your business out, and the number one thing you need to be doing is asking the IT company that you're working with, or companies that you're working with, to see how you can automate any of the processes in your business. There should never be double-data entry. You should never be having someone fill out a form or 5-page application that states "Here is... List your income, your partner's income" and all these other different things. I'm sure you've got them in a digital form, yeah? You don't have people...? Yeah, okay, cool! That means you're ahead of the curve. Most people don't and it's so stupid because you're asking them to fill this out so that you can make money, and it's a hurdle that you've put in front of them to fill out so that you can make money. You need to sort of remove any of the hurdles and make it so it's easy for people to spend money with you. You want people to spend money with you and not have hurdles like that. Brendan: What's your number one piece of software for automation that you favour? Joshua Lewis: That could be used diagnostically with any business? Brendan: Yeah. Joshua Lewis: From a marketing perspective, it's all very hard to answer. Otter is fantastic for note-taking and that kind of relates to most people in this room, which is why I bought that one up. But from a marketing perspective, Active Campaign I think is fantastic. It's really, really useful but there's... if you're looking to having professional note-taking... because that doesn't go to any other third parties, that's just shared with you and done through artificial intelligence to work out who's saying what. There's another tool called Rev, so the way our podcast works... I'm recording this now, this'll turn into a podcast which is cool. All the ums and ahs and dirty jokes get edited out or not, and then that thing gets transcribed and then gets images added and then key parts are all outlined, and that's all done through other people, so outsourcing would be the ultimate way to automate your business, but that's not really a tool as you said. But from a transcribing perspective, Rev.com, fantastic, Otter is fantastic, Active Campaign amazing. What sort of element would you like to automate? Brendan: As much as possible. Joshua Lewis: Email follow-ups when you have someone call through, there's auto follow-up as an Outlook add-in which would be touching on what you were saying before. If someone hasn't responded to you, it automatically sends them an email back and you can tell if they've opened it, if they've looked at it, if they've responded or what the situation is. Carolyn: You've won awards for what you do, right? Joshua Lewis: Yeah. Carolyn: How do you stay on top of this game? Joshua Lewis: I hate it. It's a good question. Just the best way to do it is by not looking within your field, because if you're at any user meeting that you ever go to, you're already there learning the same information as your competitors at the same time, which means you, if you don't have as much work force to implement it, are learning it later, or you're implementing it later which means your customers and the ongoing effect is then later. So looking through other industries to learn about any of these different tools is my number one way to do that, so I go to lots of different industry meetings that have nothing to do with technology and IT. But then, yeah... Dorks Delivered is the IT, I'm Business Efficiency Experts is the business that I've been talking about with automation and getting your life back, which is described heavily in the Business for Freedom podcasts. But you really want to just make sure that you know what direction you want your business to go in as well. If your business is there to... well like a hobby business to have a bit of side hustle, a bit more money coming in, it's a completely different story. If that is what you want to be leaving your legacy to your kids and that's why you need to be building it up so that you can allow yourself to not be the primary key person in the business, so you can step out and in but still have the incomes. Does that make sense? Carolyn: Yeah. Joshua Lewis: Cool! Cool! Any other questions? Joshua Lewis: No-one's asked about the book! What about the book! So the "Go-Giver" is something I believe in very, very strongly. Bob Burg has a fantastic range of books. I don't know who he is personally, but it sounds like I'm doing a sales pitch for him. It's all about giving more than what you're... and you'll receive more. So you give more, you give more information, you give everything that you can. Any bit of... anyone that ever called me up, I would be more than happy talking on the phone or catching up for lunch or coffee and going through any problem that they have, because ultimately... and you guys should all be the same because ultimately you are all the best at what you do. And is anyone familiar with the Dunning-Kruger Effect? It's a statement that says "The more you know, the less you think you know." Anyone that does not think that they're the best at what they do, is because they're already more knowledgeable than their peers who haven't gone as deep into it as you. So everyone should be comfortable enough to talk and give the information to their clients as much as you can, and don't try and sell information, give it all away for free. That's why we started the YouTube channel and we found it to be very, very effective for all of our clients, more effective than even person-to-person conversations because it gives them a digital fridge magnet that comes through each week, they get to see what's happening, they get to understand from a technical pers... sorry, what's happening technically from a perspective of an advantage for a business owner. But he describes some of the different ways and how that benefits and how that comes back tenfold, so everyone needs to... we had a raffle here last time, man! That's why I bought the book. What is this? Tracey: I'll buy a ticket. Joshua Lewis: You'll buy a ticket, sweet! Everyone put their business cards into a bowl, it's not even a fishbowl here. Hey, there you go, perfect! I think I've got half of the business cards. Okay, ready? Amanda: Have you got the business card in a box or are you going to just say a name perhaps? Carolyn: Probably Joshua Lewis: So I bought a book! I bought a book and everything! Carolyn: But we have to take it off your hands. Joshua Lewis: It's a fantastic book. It's definitely... it's great! I've actually got another... Amanda: If I win, I'll share it. Joshua Lewis: I've got another book he has on what he calls a success formula which is just a smaller book around the same sort of principles, but more definitely based around sales more than just life, and how to do everything. Joshua Lewis: Sweet! Well, did everyone enjoy that today? Carolyn: Yes! Joshua Lewis: So you're all going to be on like a podcast and a blog and everything else. Peta: Thank you! Joshua Lewis: And you'll get an automated email from me with the latest blog that's just come through, and me asking you all about your hobbies and that, it was all done while I was sitting here, so utilise your time. Do it!

This week Frankie Tortora and Steve Folland have a chat in response to a question submitted anonymously. Let's call the person... Gemma. She says: "If I'd gone back to my librarian job, my M-I-L was going to babysit for a full day every week to ease the financial burden and get baby cuddles in. However, now that I am fully self-employed, she 'pops down to visit' for 2-5 hours every other week, of which 1 hour is lunch that I am expected to cook, and eat with her. It's lovely of course, but it's hardly letting me get any work done.... It's obviously a favour so I struggle with the guilt of pushing it beyond being family time to being work time.” What would your advice be? Let us know your thoughts using #DIFTKpodcast on Twitter and Instagram, and join in the conversation via the DIFTK Community on Facebook. ••• This episode is supported by the lovely people at IPSE, the Association of Independent Professionals and the Self Employed. ••• Frankie Tortora's website Steve Folland's website Steve's podcast - Being Freelance* Doing It For The Kids website DIFTK Facebook Community DIFTK Instagram DIFTK Twitter

I got tired of the 100 point ratings system for cigars, so I created my own. I call it the 'Cigar Score." Every cigar earns a CigarScore of 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5, with 5 being the best. But the CigarScore is more than just a rating system - it's a way for me to let you know what I'd recommend to my family and friends.CigarScore 5:Cigars that earn a CigarScore 5 are my favorite smokes. These cigars are so good, they should only be smoked on special occasions. I recommend these cigars to my friends and family members and actively seek them out in humidors. I also factor in price into the rating and keep that in mind when I make recommendations.CigarScore 4:Cigars that earn a CigarScore 4 are great cigars, but, for some reason, don't earn a CigarScore of 5. These are your daily, “go to” cigars that you could smoke for a year and never get bored. They're smooth and flavorful, but, perhaps, not as tasty and complex as cigars that earn a 5.CigarScore 3:Cigars earning a CigarScore 3 are fair, but not special. These cigars are ones I'd smoke again, but only if I couldn't find one of my other “go-to” smokes.CigarScore 2:Cigars with a CigarScore 2 are ones I'd really prefer to not smoke again. They were ok, but I wouldn't recommend them to a friend or a family member. These cigars are sticks to be avoided unless you're up for a mediocre adventure and you can't find something better.CigarScore 1:If a cigar earns a CigarScore 1, it should be avoided.  If I rate a cigar a 1, I will actively go out of my way to discourage people from smoking it. Just like a CigarScore of 5 is rare, so is a CigarScore of 1, but both happen. If I'd rather not smoke anything that a certain cigar, it will earn a CigarScore of 1.Factors I Consider in My Reviews:Reviewing a cigar is a complex thing to do. We might not like the same things, however, I try to be objective in my reviews. I've been smoking for almost 20 years and have tasted cigars from all over Central and South America, so I've got decent palate.I try to smoke cigars of all shapes, sizes, wrappers and from all regions. I smoke my review cigars with different cuts and lights to make sure I'm giving accurate feedback.Factors of a cigar review:price – how expensive is the cigar and is it worth the pricedraw – is the cigar easy to smoke, does it burn evenlyflavor – does it taste like grass or cardboard or something deliciousaroma – smell is almost as important as tastehow long the cigar lasts – usually an indication of build-qualityseveral other factors – value for the dollar, etc.I'm not pretentious about it, I just know what I like and what I would feel comfortable recommending to you if we were to sit down and have a smoke together.:::::Find & Rate Where to Smoke Cigars at https://www.cigarscore.comWhere I buy my cigars: https://click.cigarscore.com/famoussmokePremium Cigar Samplers: https://click.cigarscore.com/fs-premiumsamplers:::::Subscribe to my YouTube Channel! - https://click.cigarscore.com/subscribeonyoutube::::: Gear I Used or Mentioned in This Video :::::Main camera: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-canon80dMain lens: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-canon18125mmMusic: https://www.cigarscore.com/musicLapel mic: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-movolv1Sturdy tripod: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-tripod:::::SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cigarscoreTwitter: https://www.twitter.com/cigarscoreInstagram: https://Instagram.com/cigarscore:::::AFFILIATE DISCLAIMER: Hey, so, some of the links in my videos and descriptions are affiliate links. But, I only recommend products/services I use and love myself =) More details here - https://www.cigarscore.com/ads-and-affiliate-disclaimer-disclosure/

Please excuse when I say this is episode 3 as it's clearly not!  It's 6!  It's the third episode I recorded though but decided to upload what I had recorded in different orders to what I recorded them in! In this episode I chat about weight loss surgery.  And I may say a few things that people don't agree with but I am sharing my lived experience and my personal opinion on this topic. I always get asked if I have had it.  Yes, I have but in saying that, it didn't work as well as I had hoped it would and whilst I still have my band, it does not restrict the amount of food that I can eat.  It doesn't really serve a purpose at all at this point as I need to have it repaired again.   People ask me if I regret my decision to have weight loss surgery given the fact it didn't work as well as I'd hoped it would.  No, not at all.  If it were not for my lap band, I'd be dead.  I went from being 175kg in March 2008 to being 243kg in August 2010.  That's a massive 68kg in just under 2 years.  If I'd gone another 2 years at that rate, I'd be 311kg - if I didn't die before hand which I really believed I would have. As always, feel free to get in touch with me anytime with any questions, comments or feedback you may have :) I have a list of topics to discuss in the coming months but welcome more.  If you'd like me to touch on something, let me know :)  Follow me on Instagram @movingforwardlookingforward or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/movingforwardlookingforward and you can email me at stephmflf@gmail.com    

Your gyms value does not come from the coaching, the equipment, or the class offerings. It comes from 4 things that we cover in this podcast. When you do all four of these things you’re providing SO much value to them that paper money can not be used as a measuring stick of its value. The value will be infinite. They will decline job offers and think about where they live next because it my mean they’ll lose their gym. And that’s non-negotiable. And if you know this too then you’re not worried about competition. There can 10 gyms on your street and you’ll be secure. Because you do something different than them, you don’t sell the same product. ❝If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, 'A faster horse! - Henry Ford❞ Join Our FREE Facebook Group for Gym Owners!

Rob Capps: 22 Years in the Trenches of Tech Jounalism   If I'd written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people - including me - would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.  -- Hunter S Thompson Today’s question: Can we assess the future of tech by examining it’s past? To do that, it would be worthwhile to speak with someone who was the to chronicle all that was awesome, awful, cool and weird over the past 20+ years… In this week’s episode of InSecurity, Matt Stephenson takes a walk with Rob Capps. Rob is Head of Editorial at Godfrey Dadich Parters and former editor at WIRED magazine. He has written about everything from why DVDs suck to Helena Bonham Carter to the death of the Flip camera. Want to hear from an award winning journalist who has been reporting from the front lines of technology culture for over 20 years? Rob is your man. About Rob Capps Rob Capps(@robcapps) is the Head of Editorial and a partner at Godfrey Dadich Partners. He runs the editorial division of the studio, specializing in longform narrative journalism, podcasts, documentary television and film, and other forms of non-fiction storytelling. GDP works with everyone from established media companies to large brands to emerging start-ups. Previously he was the Editorial Director of WIRED, where he oversaw editorial for all platforms, including the magazine, WIRED.com, and live events. During his 13-year career at WIRED the publication garnered 21 National Magazine Award nominations with eight wins. He also spearheaded the programing for multiple live events, including the WIRED Business Conference, the WIRED Data | Life health conference, and the WIRED x Design creativity retreat. He wrote the article “Why Things Fail,” which won the prestigious Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism. His article “The Good Enough Revolution,” was discussed in publications ranging from the Economist to the New Yorker and was noted by the New York Times as one of the big ideas of the year. Rob is also the co-curator of the annual PopTechideas conference. About Matt Stephenson Insecurity Podcast host Matt Stephenson(@packmatt73) leads the Security Technology team at Cylance, which puts him in front of crowds, cameras, and microphones all over the world. He is the regular host of the InSecurity podcastand host of CylanceTV Twenty years of work with the world’s largest security, storage, and recovery companies has introduced Stephenson to some of the most fascinating people in the industry. He wants to get those stories told so that others can learn from what has come Every week on the InSecurity Podcast, Matt interviews leading authorities in the security industry to gain an expert perspective on topics including risk management, security control friction, compliance issues, and building a culture of security. Each episode provides relevant insights for security practitioners and business leaders working to improve their organization’s security posture and bottom line. Can’t get enough of Insecurity? You can find us wherever you get your podcasts including Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud, I Heart Radio as well as ThreatVector InSecurity Podcasts: https://threatvector.cylance.com/en_us/category/podcasts.html iTunes/Apple Podcasts link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/insecurity/id1260714697?mt=2 GooglePlay Music link: https://play.google.com/music/listen#/ps/Ipudd6ommmgdsboen7rjd2lvste Make sure you Subscribe, Rate and Review!

003B: Tips for Visiting Shetland Released: March 1, 2019 You should visit Shetland. I just want to make that point clear, right off the bat. I love to travel and I've been blessed to be able to travel far more than my original life circumstances led me to believe I'd be able to. On my travels, I have learned that it is a gift to be able to slip on some different cultural lenses for a time. (The greatest blessing might be that I continue to find that the bedrock we share is the same.) While I've enjoyed the all of my trips, there have been only three places where I felt like I'd like to linger in those lenses for a few years and see if I could incorporate aspects of the culture into my own character. One place I ended up lingering long enough to mostly raise my children. The other I'll maybe talk about another time. The third is Shetland. If it's not already on your bucket list of places to go, add it. And place it higher on the list than you think you should. And I'm not just speaking to knitters here. Nonknitters--spend at least a couple of weeks. Knitters, you'll want a month. Or longer. That's pretty pie-in-the-sky planning for most of us, I know. Aim for at least a week! No, I'm not kidding. Yes, I know the islands that comprise Shetland are much smaller than, say, Japan, which your cousin visited and felt he saw everything there was to see in 10 days. First of all, I'd call anyone who said that about Japan a liar or ignorant. Second, get out of that tourist, check-the-boxes mindset. There are things you will want to do and see on Shetland. Plenty. But it is also an ideal place to just go and be. Getting There There are three ways people tend to get to Shetland. One is by cruise ship. I assume those folks are there as part of a cruise around ports in the North Sea. If that's how you're getting to Shetland, you'll only really have time to get into Lerwick. You're going to want to stay longer. I promise. The next option is by plane. LoganAir is the only airline that services Shetland. You can fly from multiple cities in Scotland year-round, and seasonally from Manchester, England, and Bergen, Norway. This is, in theory, the quickest way to get to Shetland; however, weather often causes delays, so pack some snacks and something to keep your mind occupied. Both of my flights were delayed by several hours, but the LoganAir staff kept us all well apprised of what was going on. All of it was beyond their control, and passengers just rolled with it. While chatting with an attendant on the way up, I was told if the flight becomes truly impossible due to weather concerns, they put passengers on the ferry. A fellow passenger shared that when they travel to and from the mainland, they always leave a day before they need to be somewhere, to allow time for potential delays. The third way to get to Shetland is by ferry through NorthLink Ferries. They depart in the afternoon from Aberdeen and arrive in the morning in Lerwick. They offer different levels of accommodation at different price points. You can rent private rooms with beds, a bed in a shared room (you'll be grouped by gender), sleeping pods (akin to some business class seats on planes) and basic reclining seats. There are showers on board, so you can arrive fresh and ready to go in the morning. Be aware, though, that the passage can be rough. However, delays are much less likely with the ferry than with air travel. Getting Around I strongly recommend that you rent a car. Yes, there is public transport. Yes, you may have to drive on the left instead of the right. But, the truth is that unless you are planning on staying in town all day, you will want the flexibility that having a car provides, especially if you are there for a limited amount of time. My chariot during my stay. Star Rent-a-Car, Ltd. is the company I rented from because they have an office at the airport and in Lerwick, so I knew I could get the care right away and if anything happened, they had an outlet close to my flat. They are a popular choice. You'll see their sherbert-colored Fiat 500s all over the islands. They rent subcompacts through 7-seaters, including prestige vehicles. The one thing they didn't seem to have was automatic transmission vehicles. So, before you head to the islands, find yourself a standard and practice. Also, have the person at the rental desk come out and show you any quirks of the vehicle. For instance, there was a trick to removing the gas cap on my car that I didn't discover until it was time to remove the gas cap three days later. If you don't drive or really don't want to drive on Shetland, there are buses. Plan your activities around the bus schedule, take a book with you, and you should be fine. Many of the roads on Shetland are single-lane roads. All along these roads there are wider areas where you can pull to the side and allow on-coming traffic to pass. Sometimes both sides of the road widen, sometimes it's one of the other. If both sides widen, whoever gets to the pull-off first should pull to the side. If the road widens to the left, you should pull over, if it widens to your right, on-coming traffic should pull over. Regardless of who moves out of the way, you should give a little wave as you pass. It's only polite. Staying There I'm going to be frank here. When I was looking into booking my trip, very few of the available hotels in the Lerwick area looked appealing to me. The ones that did were already booked up. I did not actually see the rooms in these less-than-appealing hotels, but the photos on their websites made them look very dated and run down. If this is not the actual situation, I would suggest to these hoteliers that they invest in some new photos. I ended up turning to Airbnb and found an apartment a short walk away from the Commerce Street area of Lerwick that had everything I needed and was a perfect jumping-off point for all my adventures in Shetland. There are many people offering apartments or homes on Airbnb, and even more offering single rooms in their house. Be aware that during festivals and events on Shetland, all forms of accommodation are in high demand. As of writing this, there are only a handful of hotel rooms and Airbnb "entire place" listings available for Wool Week 2019--a event taking place seven months from now. So if you plan to visit during one of their peak events, book as soon as you can. Things to Do and See There is far more to do and see on Shetland than the small landmass suggests. Shetlanders create their own fun and are very proud of their history and heritage. There are festivals galore and museums a-plenty. There are artists with open studios, opportunities to observe birds and animals in their native habitats, and no lack of space for rambling. Overlooking the Jarlshof, an area that was continuously occupied and built over by humans for thousands of years. Promote Shetland is the best place to start planning your trip. From there, hop over to TripAdvisor to learn the specifics of various attractions. Below is a list of all the places I visited on my 4-day trip. This should give you a sense of just how much you can fit in if you do need to keep your trip short. If I'd stayed longer, I would have added visits to Unst and Yell, a nature cruise, a dance in a community center, and a knitting circle. Plus, I would have wandered about more in nature. And, had I been able to be more flexible with my dates, I would have timed my visit to line up with one of the many festivals. Bottom line: I really do regret only having had four days to visit. The ruined church on St. Ninian's Isle. A cache of treasure was found here in the 1950s by a school boy. Reproductions are in the Shetland Museum and Archives. The originals are in Edinburgh. Anne's 4-Day Trip (Your results may vary) The smaller sites can be visited in 30-60 minutes. Larger museums and sites take 1-2 hours. Rather than listing the sites in the order I saw them (because I don't completely remember!), I am listing from the south toward the north: Sumburgh Head Lighthouse Jarlshof Prehistoric and Norse Settlement Old Scatness Croft House Museum St. Ninian's Isle Broch of Mousa Hoswick Visitor's Center Scalloway Castle Scalloway Museum Clickimin Broch Lerwick Shetland Museum and Archives Bressay Shetland Textile Museum Bonhoga Gallery Tangwick Haa Museum The Broch of Mousa. The little pointy bit at the top is a person for scale. Shopping Every museum and visitor's center I got to visit had a gift shop. You will have plenty of opportunities to buy souvenirs! Generally speaking, the best concentration and variety of shops that I encountered was along Commercial Street in Lerwick, which got a mention in The Guardian's list of 10 cool shopping districts around the world. There was a nice blend of tourist-oriented and "real life needs" shops to be found there. Another spot in Lerwick for gifts and daily-need items is the Toll Clock Shopping Center on the north side of town. Near the Toll Clock is the Co-op grocery store, in case you are staying in a flat and need some ingredients for meals, and a Tesco is available on the south side of town. There are also specialty food shops scattered through town and drug stores can be found on Commercial Street and on the corner of Commercial Road and Burgh Rd. Jamieson's of Shetland and Jamieson and Smith were the two yarn stores I was able to visit, but there are other places for yarn and finished sweaters as well, such as Anderson and Co. and Loose Ends. Some other shops that tickled my fancy in the Commercial Street area were Love from Shetland, The Peerie Shop, Peerie Isles, and Ninian. Remember to be sure about hours and opening days before you head into town to lighten your wallet. Additionally, there is a Craft Trail you can follow to visit artisans at work and buy directly from them!. Places to Eat This list is incredibly incomplete. I ate in Shetland with a special diet, so I was actually pretty excited to find so many options to meet my needs. But, that said, there were tons of restaurants on Shetland at various price points and convenience levels, so this list of places where I took my meals is far from exhaustive. Scalloway Hotel Da Steak Hoos Sumburgh Hotel Saffron Restaurant and Bar Prep Work There are a few things I'd recommend to prepare yourself before your trip. First, watch Shetland or read the book series the show is based on by Anne Cleves. Yes, it will have you convinced that this island network of 23,000 people has a serious murder problem. Just remind yourself that it is a work of fiction. The stories are gripping to watch/read, and the show will acquaint you with the scenery, culture, and look of Lerwick. (At times, the first series feels like a travel advert, but that's ok! It was all helpful information!) Fans of the series Shetland will recognize this as Jimmy Perez's home. You can see it along the waterfront in Lerwick. Second, there are some common themes that arise in the various museums around the island. The first is the island's knitting history. Even if you aren't a knitter, a working knowledge of the history of Shetland knitting will help you appreciate what you see when you're there. The first parts of Alice Starmore's Book of Fair Isle Knitting and Magical Shetland Lace Shawls to Knit provide a good overview. The latter parts of the books cater more to the interests of knitters, but will also help non-knitters train their eyes for what they will see when they are there. Several of the museums have community scarves for visitors to contribute to. I did my bit (between the needles) on this scarf at the Scalloway Museum. The second common theme of the museums is Shetland's involvement in World War II, specifically the Shetland Bus, which was a group of people running secret missions between Shetland and Norway using fishing boats. A little background knowledge will help you better appreciate what the remaining artifacts represent. Final Thoughts I went to Shetland with my checklist of activities and a sense of adventure and left feeling like I was leaving home. The checklist was helpful, but after a day or two, I found myself mentally calculating the price of moving to this gem on the edge of the North Sea. The people are kind and welcoming. The food was delicious. The landscape was full of surprises. Shetland climbed into a corner of my heart and it has stayed there. I look forward to visiting again in 2019. Maybe I'll see you there! For additional information about knitting-related sites and shopping on Shetland, listen to Episode 003: Shetland. You can follow Anne on Instagram or Ravelry as @ithoughtiknewhow. She posts articles related to knitting and yarn on the Facebook Group and Twitter as @ThoughtIKhewHow. Subscribe to the podcast through iTunes or the podcast app of your choice.

David gets into Blair's head to get his 10 basic negotiating tips that he has worked with clients on over the years.   LINKS “10 Negotiating Tips” (with 5 bonus tips) “Selling in One Lesson,” 2Bobs episode 49 Buying Less for Less: How to avoid the Marketing Procurement dilemma, by Gerry Preece Negotiating with Backbone: Eight Sales Strategies to Defend Your Price and Value, by Reed K. Holden   TRANSCRIPT DAVID C. BAKER: Blair, today we are going to talk about 10 really interesting ways you can get your spouse to go ... Wait, I haven't, quit laughing. I haven't - BLAIR ENNS: I'm out. DAVID: How to get your spouse to go to the place for dinner that you want to go to. BLAIR: Okay. DAVID: How's that? BLAIR: Sure. What kind of trouble could we possibly get into? DAVID: Yeah, that would be a really stupid pod ... No. What we're talking about are some negotiating tips that you've thought about over many years. You've polled, you've tested, you've researched. You've worked with clients on. You've consolidated them into this one place. We may get to some bonus tips. I don't know if we'll have the time, but we definitely want to talk about the 10 basic tips around negotiating. Can you get me inside your head for a minute before I start pulling these out from you one by one? BLAIR: Well it's pretty crowded in there. What is it that you wanted access to? I gave you my password to everything the other day. What else do you want? DAVID: Is this going to be this difficult today? Are we going to do that? Or are we going to be cooperative? BLAIR: I'm feeling a little punchy. DAVID: Yeah, I see. I see you are. BLAIR: I'm in another hotel room. This is day 31 of a 36 day road trip. I tweeted today, "Okay. I've answered the question, how much travel is too much?". DAVID: Yeah. BLAIR: Getting into my head, I think these tips, I considered it kind of a beginner's guide to negotiating. I don't consider myself to be an expert on negotiating. But you can't advise people on the subject of selling and pricing without knowing something about negotiating, so a while ago I took a bunch of the best practices that I've encountered on the subject of negotiating, and kind of put it into one place. That's I think what we're going to talk about today. I'll call it a beginner's guide to negotiating, and we're referencing to these 10 tips that I've published previously. DAVID: Hopefully it will be more than a beginner's guide. But we'll just set people's expectations low. BLAIR: Yeah, right. DAVID: Then we'll exceed them. BLAIR: That's exactly what I was doing. DAVID: There are 10 in here. But there are two of them that we've actually had the chance to talk about in previous episodes. I will reference all 10 of them. But then with two of them I'm going to point people to a previous episode if they want to really bone up on all that stuff. DAVID: The first one is, avoid over-investing. This is one that we have talked about. It was in a recent episode. It was called Selling In One Lesson. The idea is that the more somebody wants it, the more at a disadvantage they are, right? Just summarize that for us and then we'll move on to the number two one. Over-investing is the first one. BLAIR: Yeah, so you can, a good metaphor for negotiating would be a poker game where there's times when you're bluffing, when you're playing certain hands. But in particular the idea of bluffing. Or calling somebody else's bluff. You can apply some of the tips that we'll talk about here. If it's very clear to the client that you want this so bad, and it's clear to the client not just from what you say, but from all of the free work that you have done, all of the costs that you've incurred. If you are clearly over-invested in the sale then you do not have much of a bargaining position. Because you are demonstrating through your behavior that you want it more than the client does. Therefor the client is the one with the power in the relationship. BLAIR: It's a big broad rule. Avoid over-investing in the sale. As you pointed out, we covered this in detail in the podcast, Selling In One Lesson. DAVID: Okay. Even if you do desperately need it, don't act like it. BLAIR: Right. DAVID: Second, and here we want to start diving in in more detail. The second principle for negotiating is, ask the question, "Have we already won?". As I read that, I wasn't sure exactly what you meant. That led me to dive a little bit deeper into this, and I found it really interesting. "Have we already won?". Are you really asking that specific question? Or is it more just framing the negotiating in your head? BLAIR: This is a negotiating point specific to the topic of negotiating with procurement. This comes up a lot, I wrote about this in my book, Pricing Creativity: A Guide To Profit Beyond the Billable Hour. In the last month in the various places I've been, and the talks that I've done, and the training I've done, procurement has come up a lot. Where I'll talk about a principle and somebody says, "Yeah, but you don't understand. That doesn't work with procurement". BLAIR: The role of procurement, and I learned the most from this listening to a talk by a guy named Tom Kinnaird. Tom was head of procurement at WPP. Gerry Preece is another great resource on negotiating with procurement people. Gerry is an ex P&G global design procurement person who has a consulting practice, and he's written a great book on dealing with procurement. It's called Buying Less For Less. I think the subtitle is The Marketing Procurement Problem. BLAIR: When I was listening to Tom Kinnaird, who was former head of procurement at WPP and is now a consultant, he was giving away at a conference in London I was also speaking at, he was giving away some insider procurement tips. One of the tips he gave away was, you need to know that procurement often lies. When procurement shows up at the end of a negotiation, when you feel like you are the ordained firm, you've either won the business or you're in the pole position, and then procurement shows up to negotiate the final deal. In that situation, almost greater than nine out of 10 times, you have won. You've already won, and the concessions that procurement is demanding that you make, it's not mandatory that you make them. BLAIR: Procurement's going to communicate to you that, in order for you to win the business, that it's still a competitive situation, they're still considering other firms. In order for you to win the business you have to cut price. The general rule of thumb is, if procurement shows up late and starts using that language on you, they're lying. I talk about this in my next article. I'm actually quite heated about it in the next article. So far I'm only at the unedited version of it. DAVID: Still very angry. BLAIR: Yeah. It will be published by the time this podcast goes to air. Hopefully it's a little bit more measured. But in it I make the point that procurement is the only profession in the world that I know of where they're taught that it's okay to lie. It's okay to outright lie in the course of everyday business. When they show up late and say, "You need to sharpen your pencil. We've got three bids. You're the highest bidder. You need to get your price to X or you're not getting the business", they're almost always lying. BLAIR: Now when procurement shows up at the beginning and they navigate the entire purchase process, you have another problem. They're not lying. It's an even bigger problem. They're seeing what it is that they're buying as a commodity, so you have to ask yourself, should you be even participating in a process where the client clearly does not value what you do, and it's seen as an expense to be minimized rather than an investment to be made? But the lesson is, so the tip is, ask the question, "Have you already won?". BLAIR: When you're in a situation where it feels like you've won, and then procurement comes in and says, "You haven't won yet. You've got to get past us. You have to give us all of these concessions", don't believe them. In fact I would go further and say, "We have this idea that we've got to throw procurement a bone in a situation like this. We'll give them this one win and then they'll go away". That's not how they work. They're trained to keep asking until you say no, so you want to start with no. BLAIR: We could go deeper into that. We could do a whole podcast on negotiating with procurement. But that's the tip. You ask yourself before you start giving concessions away, ask yourself, "Wait a minute. Have I already won here? Is it really necessary for me to make these concessions?". Because in a lot of situations you have already won, and it is not in your interest to make any concessions whatsoever. DAVID: The main clue is found in when procurement comes. At the beginning or the end. BLAIR: Yes. DAVID: That's the second one, okay. The third tip here takes this further, and it's around the idea that procurement lies regularly. Not just about this one thing that we're talking about that relates to how to decipher the timing and whether you've actually won. BLAIR: Yeah, so it is a recurring theme here. You might think, I always say, "Attack ideas. Don't attack people and organizations". But I always make an exception for procurement. Reid Holden, who's written a couple of great books on pricing and also on negotiating, and he infiltrated the world of procurement. He has this great line, and I repeat it often. "80 percent of procurement people give the other 20 percent a bad name". DAVID: As opposed to 20-80, yeah. You're flipping that around, right? BLAIR: Yeah. In the story I'm writing, I'm writing two different examples of two different agencies pitching two different pieces of business and then having to deal with procurement. One hold their ground and the other one doesn't hold their ground. The example where the agency holds their ground, they're told in the beginning, "The account is a $500,000 a year retainer", and so they do a little pilot project for free. They prove validation. Then they're handed off to procurement and procurement says, "The fees are not $500,000. They're $300,000. Take it or leave it". The firm walked away, and in the end the client came back and said, "Oh, no no. We want you to work with us. You can have the original $500,000". BLAIR: As I was talking to the agency president who was telling me this story, I said to him, "If I were you in that situation. If I'd heard that from the procurement person, I would want to get the client and the procurement person in the room together. I would want to look them both in the eyes and say, 'I want to know which one of you lied to me. You said it was $500,000 in fees. You said it's not $500,000, it's $300,000. One of you lied. Which one was it?'". BLAIR: We know who the liar is. The liar is always procurement, right? Because they're taught that it's okay to lie. But I just imagine, and I'm ranting in this article, and you can feel me getting emotional now. Because I can't believe that we continue to give this egregious behavior a free pass. We need to call out irresponsible practices and outright lies when we hear them from our clients and our clients' procurement department. I hope I've addressed the issue of three procurement lies. I feel like we should probably get off the subject of procurement. DAVID: Well I turned the recorder off a long time ago, and what people are going to hear instead of you ranting is me providing a very reasonable response to all of these things. BLAIR: Instead of my therapy while I lie on your couch. I'm going to a marketing procurement conference in London. I think it's in June. I'm really looking forward to being in the room with these people, and having an open conversation about what I think of their business practices. DAVID: The third point is, beware of procurement lies. Let me just read some of these and then we'll go to the next point. "It's down to you and one other". That's one lie. Another one is, "Yours is the highest bid". Another is, "You have to cut your price to remain in contention", or all these other things that you might hear. BLAIR: Or, "Take it or leave it. There's no negotiating. There's no middle ground. Here's my offer. Take it or leave it". That's another one. DAVID: Right, yeah. Then a concession, you say, is an invitation to ask for more. All right. Let's get you back down to happy land, and we'll move off of procurement. BLAIR: Well we're still going to talk about procurement a little bit here in the next one. Go ahead. DAVID: The fourth point is, outwait the waiter. Outwait the waiter is the fourth point. Talk about that. BLAIR: Yeah. I forget where I heard this idea from first, because I really would like to attribute to the various sources that I've pulled all of these things from. It might be Chris Voss who wrote, "Never split the difference. Negotiate like your life depends on it". Or it might be Jim Camp. Or it might be Tom Kinnaird. I don't remember who. But the idea is, when you're in the final negotiations with people, and again it's almost always procurement. Because it's procurement who's trained in negotiating. That's another point. We really need to be trained in negotiating to counteract those on the client side who are trained in negotiating. BLAIR: One of the tactics that they do is, after you've won, or you think you've won, they slow everything down. Procurement will say, "I'll get back to you in this time period", and then they'll take longer. You'll reach out to them and leave a message, and they'll just kind of stretch things out to make you sweat and to make you more nervous. That's the way they can extract more concessions from you. BLAIR: Again, if you think back to the formula that we talked about in Selling In One Lesson, P equals DB over D. Your power in the sale is a function of your desirability, is your desirability greater than your own desire? Because if it's not, if you're communicating that your desire for the client and the engagement is higher than the client's desire, then you have the least power in the relationship. The tactic when procurement is trying to slow things down to make you sweat is, you slow things down even more. If they take 24 hours to get back to you, you take 48 hours. You communicate to them that, "Yeah, that's fine. We're in no rush. I mean, if this is going to happen it's going to happen. If it isn't, that's fine too". BLAIR: It's almost a game of, and there are times when negotiating really is a game and it really should be fun. It's never fun if you're over-invested in the sale, right? DAVID: Yeah, right. BLAIR: But it should be fun, and you should play this game. Instead of being anxious you just play it out and outwait them. If they delay, you delay longer. If they say they can't speak for 48 hours, you say you can't speak for 96 hours, etc. DAVID: Just multiply by two. BLAIR: Yeah. DAVID: They're saying, "We need to slow this down in some way", and they're expecting you to indicate some investment in the sale. Like minor panic or whatever. Instead you're flipping this around and saying, "Ah, no problem at all. Do you need more time?". BLAIR: Yeah. DAVID: "That's fine. We're not in any hurry, okay". BLAIR: You got it. DAVID: Got it, so that's the fourth point. The fifth point here is to beware the white knight. I don't think we need to talk too much about this one, because in a slightly different context we did talk about this in an episode called How To Drive Your Employees Batshit Crazy. Here we were talking more about management and so on. But the principle is the same. It's this idea that we are going to bring in the big white knight to save the day. Just give us a few sentences on this one. BLAIR: Yeah, the white knight is usually the senior person on your team. There's some negotiating going back and forth. Everything's proceeding, maybe well but slowly. Maybe it doesn't feel like it's proceeding well. But the principle or the senior person swoops in and says, "You know what? I'm going to fix, I'm going to get this deal done in one fell swoop". They show up and make a concession, thinking, "Okay. I'll just make the one concession and close on this". What they don't understand is, they've just undone a lot of work being done by other good people. BLAIR: Sometimes it makes sense, if you think of the previous tip about outwait the waiter. Sometimes it makes sense to just, it's part of the negotiation. To slow things down. When the principle shows up to speed things up and says, "I'm going to make this one concession and close the deal", then they realize, that one concession is really just the beginning. They have just created a whole new set of problems, and the likelihood that the agency is going to close this business at a profitable position has just diminished significantly. BLAIR: The idea is, be careful about allowing the senior person, usually the principle, to swoop in at the last minute and make a concession that they think is going to just close the deal. Because it usually doesn't work that way. DAVID: Yeah. On the other side of the table, they've discovered where the weakness is and how they can get even more concessions. Because you've tipped your hand. That's a good one. DAVID: All right, number six. Decide your give and gets in advance. Decide your give and gets in advance. Which is opposite of what you just talked about, where somebody else swoops in without much consultation. We might make a concession, but we're going to do it very intentionally. We're not going to be willy nilly here. Decide your give and gets in advance. Who's doing this? The team as whole? Anybody that's in a position of power? How does this work? BLAIR: That's a good question. It's not just the person who's on the front lines. It's the people ultimately who have to live with the decision. It's a senior member. It's probably a team decision or the decision in the principle. The idea here is similar to going into an auction, right? We go to an auction, we think, "I'm not going to do anything stupid", and we end up bidding these crazy high prices. Because in part, loss aversion bias kicks in. We make a bid, we mentally own it, and then somebody outbids us and now we've lost something that we just a second ago emotionally owned. BLAIR: What the science shows is, we value losing something about two times as much as we value gaining it. In an auction that causes us to do crazy things. The way you combat that going into an auction is, you have an honest conversation with yourself about what your absolute maximum price is, and you do not deviate from that maximum price whatsoever. You do not allow yourself to get swept up in the moment. You hold the line by making the decision in advance. BLAIR: The principle here of, "Decide your give gets in advance", is the same thing. You decide, what are you willing to give up in advance in the negotiation? What are you not willing to give up? What is it that you absolutely need to get from the client, and what are you willing to take a pass on? You make those decisions in advance so that you do not find yourself in the middle of a negotiation, while at the table or in the conversation, giving away something that you are going to regret later. You just draw the boundaries in advance of the negotiation.   DAVID: I want to take a slight detour here and ask you a question. Because we're assuming that this is occurring at the outset of a new relationship in many cases. If you do this right, do you have to play these same games in subsequent negotiations with the same client? Or do they get and sort of figure out your style and where the lines are, so that it's a little bit more efficient later? BLAIR: Yeah. There's two different camps here, and we may be opening a big can of worms. I mean, it's a legitimate question. There's the negotiating with procurement camp, where if you really are using these principles and you're getting into these protracted things and you have these standoffs, you win. You've won the first round. That does not mean that procurement's not coming back for you even harder. When you're going into a relationship with that type of organization, you're going to win some battles. Ultimately you will lose the war. Ultimately everybody loses the war. BLAIR: The idea is that you get to a point where, "All right. This relationship is no longer fruitful. They've kind of beaten all of the margin out of us over the long term". You know, hopefully it was a good run. BLAIR: Then on the other camp would be good clients where you're not dealing with procurement, or they're more of a value buyer where you just have to use one or two of these techniques, and you're not setting up a long term war where you're constantly battling each other. It really could be one or the other, where you're constantly in a negotiation. Always defending what you know is an onslaught that you're ultimately going to lose in the end, but it still might be worth it. It might be a three, four year good run and it's worth fighting the battle. Or other situations where you just find yourself using one or two of these techniques and that's it. Then you find yourself in a good relationship with a value buyer who really values what it is that you do. DAVID: Yeah. I find that when I talk with my clients, and we share some clients, it's dispiriting enough when they have to enter these negotiations with a new client. But when they've worked with a client for years and then this gets turned on them again, when they want to review the relationship. They almost are just intentionally forgetting everything that happened over the last four years, and you have to prove yourself again. There isn't much in business that can pull the rug out from under your confidence and slap you in the face than something like that. I don't even know why I'm saying this. It just hits me at the moment that it's very discouraging for people to have to do that over and over again. BLAIR: I agree. DAVID: All right. Number seven. Neuter the final negotiators. Neuter ... It's like we're watching a Game of Thrones episode here. What kind of a serial killer are you in disguise? Neuter the final negotiators. Okay. What kind of knife do we use here? BLAIR: Maybe there's a better word for neuter. What I'm talking about is, the moment that you have the greatest amount of power in the relationship is the moment when the client, not the procurement person, but the client says, "You're hired". DAVID: Mm-hmm (affirmative). BLAIR: When that happens, and often you go from the client saying you're hired to, then you get handed off to procurement or legal or finance or whomever. That other department will kind of, you've got to fight another war over there. But if you know the war is coming, if you know, if you're used to dealing with the same types of clients and you know there's a battle with procurement coming, use your power at its height. The moment you're hired. BLAIR: I had a client once who called me and said, "We're doing great. We're closing all of these really big deals. Seven figures. We've got all the senior decision makers in the room. But I have the same problem. It's like every time I get a call from procurement, 'You've got to knock 200 grand off of this', etc". BLAIR: I said, "Okay. Next time it happens, next time you close a deal, in the room you have the senior decision makers. You say to the client, 'Okay. We've got a problem here'. Everybody's in agreement. We're going to do this. Here's the price. Here's the scope. Everybody's in agreement. Everybody's excited about moving forward and really looking for the engagement. Then you stop and say, 'Okay. We've got a problem. We've just agreed on this. The price is the price. We've talked about the value that we're going to create. BLAIR: I'm going to get a call from your procurement person, and that procurement person is going to tell me that if I don't knock $200,000 or $300,000 off this price we're not going to do business together. The price is the price. We've just agreed on what we all agree is fair for the value that we're going to create. The price is the price. There's no economies of scale here for us to make the price cheaper. Can we agree, when procurement calls me', and then you look over at the client side and say, 'When procurement calls me, who can I get them to call?'". BLAIR: Now you're in this little, it's a little bit like a power play move but not as bad as it sounds. In that the senior client on the client side of the table generally will take responsibility and say, "No. Have that person call me". That's what I mean by neuter the final negotiators. Leverage the fact that you have the most power to combat procurement in the moment when the client says, "You're hired". BLAIR: Now the higher up you're dealing in a client organization, the more power you have. In this example my client, the agency, was dealing with senior people on the client side. Presidents of divisions. They weren't dealing with brand managers. Bu even some brand managers might be willing to lend some weight to helping you get around procurement. But again, you ask in that moment. The moment when the client says, "I want to do this", or, "We want to hire you". That's when you have the most power to neuter the final negotiators. DAVID: Well I think this would be fun to do. Because I can see saying it with kind of a twinkle in your eye, and they just smile and look at each other. Because they know that that is coming, and they kind of chuckle and say, "Yeah yeah. Here's who it'll be. This is what they'll say. We'll take care of it". I love this one. DAVID: All right. We're on the way to 10, and we're at number eight. This one is an A B thing. What you say here is that you should either be ruthless, or you should be collaborative. One place is going to take you somewhere. The other place is going to take you somewhere else. Which is which here? Be ruthless or be collaborative? BLAIR: Yeah, so it's both but you pick your spot. You be ruthless with other professional negotiators, and you be collaborative with clients. With good clients. Because you have to work with the clients. You don't want to get into ... If you're setting the tone of the relationship moving forward where you're in this somewhat ruthless battle, you have to be aware of creating the conditions, if we're just not a very fruitful relationship moving forward. But you really should be ruthless with professionals. Again, you could hear me getting a little bit emotional as I talk about procurement people. You don't want to do that. BLAIR: One of the advantages procurement people have is, they are not emotionally invested in the sale. They don't give a shit at all, right? DAVID: They aren't even people. They don't even have emotions. BLAIR: "They're bureaucrats, Morty. Shoot them". Or, "They're robots". It's a Rick and Morty line. We're going to get into trouble with the 20 percent of the procurement people who are out there. Again, I just say to my friends in procurement, I don't actually have any friends in procurement, but it's possible that one day I might have a friend in procurement. I would just say that, the problem isn't just in the procurement profession. It's actually in the organizations above procurement who give license to procurement to procure creative and marketing service as though they were widgets. They think that they can drive cost down without affecting the quality or the value to be created. You can't really do that. The responsibility isn't just with procurement. BLAIR: But back to, these people aren't emotionally invested. We, especially if you're the creative person coming up with the concept, we tend to be emotionally invested in the results. You be ruthless with them. You hold the line. As I've already said, they're going to ask until they hear no, so you start with no. There's no need to build rapport or kindness or to ever negotiate out of emotion. If you find yourself being emotional, see if you can't retreat, regroup, let go of whatever it is that you're emotionally attached to. Then re-engage again when you're emotionally detached. But it's like, be ruthless. Hold the line. Don't fall into the trap of this ridiculous idea that you're going to befriend a procurement or a professional negotiator and you're going to, somehow through the strength of your personality, you're going to get to a solution. BLAIR: As you've pointed out, they're robots, or they're bureaucrats. I use that term in this moment out of a little bit of a respect. What I mean by that is, they're not clouded by emotions. They've got a job to do. They've got an objective. They're marching steadily toward that objective and not letting their emotions cloud their judgment, so you should be able to operate at that same unemotional ruthless level. DAVID: All right. Number nine is, use a positive no. Use a positive no. Can you explain that? I presume you can. BLAIR: Let's hope I can. DAVID: Yeah. BLAIR: There are so many different ways that you can say no. I think so many of us have a hard time delivering the word no, because in so many of our businesses, what we do is we find a creative solution to every problem. We don't accept that the answer has to be no to something, so therefore we have a hard time saying no. BLAIR: There are all kinds of different techniques on how to deliver a positive no. I'll just give you a couple of them here. First you just kind of, if there's an objection, you just make sure that you restate the objection. "Okay, I'm hearing that affordability is an issue for you". Then you deliver your no. You start with kind of a yes. "Yes, I hear that affordability is an issue for you". Then you deliver your no. "Listen, I can't give you that price in this specific situation". Then you layer in another yes. "But what I can do is stretch out the payment terms a little bit", or something else. Or throw in some other forms of value. Throughout the entire time, your attitude is always positive. It's not, "Oh, you know, I don't think we can do this". It's not, "There's no way we can do this". BLAIR: There's a time for, "No way". But there's a time when you want to use a positive no. You're nodding your head saying, "Yeah, I'm absolutely hearing you that affordability is an issue for you on this. I can't give you that price in this situation that you're looking for. But here's what I can do for you". Then deliver what it is you can. "I can throw in some extra value. I can stretch out the payment terms a little bit for you". It's all about delivering no with a positive attitude. BLAIR: I'm not saying that's always the approach. I think there are times when it's just a hard line, "No. Take it or leave it", walk away. But in many situations it makes sense to deliver a positive no. DAVID: You're also demonstrating that you've listened. That you care. You may make a decision that's not one they would prefer, but you're not just simply closing up and not listening to them. That's part of restating this to them. BLAIR: Yeah. DAVID: All right. The final one is to use alternatives to no, and you've got a few examples here. Are these used with clients or with pros? I think I probably should have asked that question many times here, because it's been interesting to hear the distinction. Using alternatives to no. Who do you use these with, primarily? BLAIR: Yeah, I would put most of these, like use a positive no or use an alternative to no, I would put most of them under the collaborate column. That means with clients. Where I find myself tending to want to be more ruthless and just deliver hard nos to procurement. Now that's me a little bit worked up emotionally, violating what I said earlier. The truth is, a really good negotiator will use positive nos and alternatives to nos with procurement from time to time. It's not just all hard lines. Although I really believe that you begin with a super hard line with procurement. BLAIR: I think generally speaking, for sure you should use these approaches with clients. The people that you want to have a fruitful working relationship with that. A great alternative to no, and I think this one comes from Chris Voss. If it's not Chris it's somebody else. I'll also, I'm recalling that some of the other techniques I probably got from Reid Holden in his book, Negotiating With Backbone. It's a small book. It's a really good book. Both of those books are great books on negotiating. BLAIR: His line, and again I think it's Chris Voss. Instead of saying no just ask, "Well how would I do that?". If procurement is saying, "Listen, the fees in your proposal, we're not giving you that. We're giving you 60 percent of what you've asked for. You can take it or leave it". Then you essentially turn the problem back onto, instead of saying no you just turn the problem back onto the client. "Okay, 60 percent of the fee. How would I do that? How would I deliver the services that you're looking for at just 60 percent?". DAVID: Mm-hmm (affirmative), and a pause, right? At that point? BLAIR: Right. Always a pause, and we're not talking about that here, but I've talked about the power of pause before. When you pause after you deliver a no or an objection or an obstacle for the client to overcome, you want to pause because whatever you hear next gives you so much information about how much power you have in the buy sell relationship. BLAIR: You could also use a, "Yes, but", instead of asking, "How would I do that?". The client might say, "I don't know. That's your problem. How you do it is your problem". You might say, "Well do you think we have 40 percent profit margin built into this?". "I don't know, that's your problem". You could say, "Yes, but". You could say, "Well you know, I suppose I could deliver on 60 percent of that. I mean, if that's your bottom line. I guess we'll just put the interns on it and remove access to senior people. Access to principles. We'll take our creative director off of it, and yeah, we can meet your price that way". DAVID: They're starting to get a warm feeling. BLAIR: Yeah. I mean, this is where we're having fun now, right? I think when the client asks you to do something ridiculous, you could ask the client, "Well okay. How would I do that?". Or if the client's not going to participate in that question you can offer a solution. Again, this speaks to the title of Gerry Preece's book, Buying Less For Less. The idea that when procurement is buying marketing services, they drive the cost down. What they don't appreciate is, they're driving the quality down. Because in a people based business, the way you get your costs down is, you get less expensive people on the job. BLAIR: Just communicate that to the client. "Okay, we can give you that price. But here are all of the things that we have to strip out". What you're almost certainly going to hear is, "No, we want those deliverables or value drivers at the price you quoted". That's where you can laugh and say, "Yeah, well let me tell you about the things that I want in my life too, that I'm not going to get either". DAVID: One of the things that I've been thinking about my own situation over the years, and something that's hit me. It's given me this kind of warm feeling. I know that sounds weird. But it's when I find myself getting a little bit angry, and that's because I feel like I'm being taken advantage of, or not appreciated to the level I should be. BLAIR: Yeah. DAVID: I can relax and tell myself, "I don't need this that badly. Why don't I just smile and make this more of an interesting exercise?". Not so much a contest, but an exercise to see what I can learn. As long as I'm willing to walk away from it, I don't understand why I'm getting angry. I need to treat this more as a business conversation. It frees up my mind to think in these categories and not get all wrapped up in myself at some point. BLAIR: Yeah. I call that smile and defy. You smile to yourself for a minute. Remind yourself, "Let's not get carried away here. This is just a game". Then you defy what it is that's been asked of you. Then you just see what happens next. You have that ability to do that. I have that ability to do that. Because we're not over-invested in the sale. We're not allocating significant resources from our businesses to close any one particular deal. DAVID: Yeah. BLAIR: When you don't over-invest, and I know and work with lots of agencies who have learned to not over-invest in the sale, everything changes when you're not over-invested. It's easier for you to smile. It's easier for you to use some of these techniques. It's easier for you to walk away from poor fits, knowing that if it really is a good fit, it will come back on your terms. DAVID: Care a lot, but don't care too early. That should be the title of this. BLAIR: That's great advice, yeah. DAVID: All right. We will put some bonus ideas in the show notes. Marcus will help us with that. These are 10, and we'll throw some more in there. This was really fun to talk about, Blair. Let's hope that none of these procurement folks listen to this before you meet them in London, or we will have some real life neutering taking place. BLAIR: I would prefer they did listen, and we had some frank and fruitful discussions. DAVID: Okay. Thank-you, Blair. BLAIR: Thanks David.

GRAVEDIGGING by Sarah Goldman   When I woke up, I noticed first that Clarissa was there, because she was always the first thing I noticed. I noticed three things immediately after that: it was dark, I could feel dirt under my fingers, and my mouth tasted disgusting, like charcoal and rubbing alcohol and cotton. "What the fuck?" is what I tried to say, except I don't think the words came out quite right. I started coughing and I couldn't stop. "Just give it a second," Clarissa said, rubbing my back. I got a good look at her once the coughing subsided and my eyes stopped watering, and she looked like she'd been run over by a truck a few times: dark circles, greasy hair, unwashed skin. Clarissa always tried to look as put together as people expected her to be. I'd seen her look this messed up once or twice before, and it never meant anything good.     [Full story after the cut.]   Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip Episode 63! This is your host, Keffy, and I’m super excited to share this story with you. Today we have a reprint of “Gravedigging" by Sarah Goldman. This story is part of the (late) Spring 2018 issue of GlitterShip is available for purchase at glittership.com/buy and on Kindle, Nook, and Kobo. If you’re a Patreon supporter, you should have access to this issue waiting for you when you log in. We also have GlitterShip Year Two available in both ebook and paperback formats to add to your queer science fiction collection. GlitterShip is also a part of the Audible Trial Program. This means that just by listening to GlitterShip, you are eligible for a free 30 day membership on Audible, and a free audiobook to keep. If you’re looking for an excellent queer book to listen to, check out Autonomous by Annalee Newitz. This book has a ton of cool concepts and really intriguing characters. If you're a fan of patent-fighting drug pirates or AI characters working out their identities, this is the book for you. To download Autonomous for free today, go to www.audibletrial.com/glittership — or choose another book if you’re in the mood for something else.     Sarah Goldman grew up near Kansas City and studied sociology at Bryn Mawr College. She is a First Reader at Strange Horizons, and her short fiction has appeared in Cicada and Escape Pod. You can find her online at sarahmgoldman.com, or on Twitter @sarahwhowrites. "Gravedigging" is narrated by A.J. Fitzwater. A.J. Fitzwater is a dragon wearing a human meat suit from Christchurch, New Zealand. A graduate of Clarion 2014, she’s had stories published in Shimmer Magazine, Andromeda Spaceways Magazine, and in Paper Road Press’s At The Edge anthology. She also has stories coming soon at Kaleidotrope and PodCastle. As a narrator, her voice has been heard across the Escape Artists Network, on Redstone SF, and Interzone. She tweets under her penname as @AJFitzwater.       GRAVEDIGGING by Sarah Goldman   When I woke up, I noticed first that Clarissa was there, because she was always the first thing I noticed. I noticed three things immediately after that: it was dark, I could feel dirt under my fingers, and my mouth tasted disgusting, like charcoal and rubbing alcohol and cotton. "What the fuck?" is what I tried to say, except I don't think the words came out quite right. I started coughing and I couldn't stop. "Just give it a second," Clarissa said, rubbing my back. I got a good look at her once the coughing subsided and my eyes stopped watering, and she looked like she'd been run over by a truck a few times: dark circles, greasy hair, unwashed skin. Clarissa always tried to look as put together as people expected her to be. I'd seen her look this messed up once or twice before, and it never meant anything good. "Are you okay?" I asked. I had a little more luck with pronunciation this time. "You look kind of like death warmed over. No offense." Clarissa started to laugh, loud and wild enough that it was more scary than comforting. When she stopped, I only had time to open my mouth to ask a question before her eyes rolled back into her head and she slumped over next to me in the dirt. We were lying on dirt. It was dark. I looked up, and up, and up, and when I saw the edges of the hole we were in, I understood what Clarissa had done. I clambered up the sides of the grave to get a good look at the headstone. I knew what it would say, but I had to see it. It told me that May Tenenbaum had died at nineteen years old. If I'd lived another three weeks, I would have been twenty. I sat back down next to Clarissa, passed out in my grave in the wedge of space she'd carved out next to my coffin. A crowbar lay beside us, where she'd used it to pry off the lid, next to the pile of small stones she'd brought for the spell. I looked down at my fingernails, which were neat and manicured like they'd never been while I was alive, and I wondered if I should try to wake Clarissa up. I'd seen her do this before, after she overexerted herself on a spell, and she'd always been all right afterwards. Her pulse, when I checked, was steady, so I stole her phone out of her pocket instead. The last day I remembered had been the fifth of June. My tombstone told me I'd died on the sixth. Today was the seventeenth. I must have been buried for at least a week or so, then. I know my father would've wanted me buried quickly, a Jewish funeral. A good thing, too. No embalming fluid for Clarissa to deal with. Performing necromancy on humans was a felony, and it was horrendously, skin-crawlingly terrifying besides. The idea had made me queasy when it happened in books or movies, when TV pundits went on rants. But from this side of things, it wasn't so bad. My hands were distressingly pale when I looked at them, and my head was in bad shape, but when I checked my face in Clarissa's phone camera, I honestly looked okay. Like I'd been at a fancy party, had too much champagne, fell down in the dirt outside. Messed up, but not a zombie. I didn't feel dead at all. What I should feel was furious. I should be demanding that Clarissa take it back. But I wasn't betrayed that someone I loved would do such an awful thing, like the girl in that modern day Frankenstein blockbuster we'd seen last month. I wasn't thinking about the greater good. I was selfishly and vainly glad, because the girl I would do anything for had done this for me. I'd seen the faces Clarissa made during that stupid movie, and yet: here we both were. Her passed out in a grave she must have spent all night digging up, and me alive when I should be dead. I ran my fingers through her hair, and after fourteen minutes by the clock on her phone, Clarissa woke up. She stared at me, and then she sat up too fast and almost fell right back down afterwards. I grabbed her shoulders to steady her. "It worked," she said, watching me with wide eyes. "It did," I said. "You still look terrible." "Shut up," she said automatically, with no heat behind it. She put her hands against the sides of my face. I wondered, distantly, if my cheeks felt cold, or if my blood had already started to warm them up again. Very suddenly, Clarissa yanked me into a hug, almost overbalancing the both of us. I hugged her back, and politely ignored the fact that she was crying into the shoulder of my nice dress. "I'm okay," I said, because Clarissa probably needed to hear it. "If anyone isn't okay, I think it's probably you. Were you supposed to pass out?" Clarissa snorted, and then shrugged without removing her face from the crook of my neck. "Occupational hazard," she said, muffled into my shoulder. After a moment, she raised her face, eyes puffy and red. "It happens sometimes, with larger—with anything more substantial." She'd probably been about to say ‘animals.’ I guess she didn't think I'd find the comparison flattering. I felt a little sick. Clarissa wiped her face on her sleeve and shook out her hair, visibly trying to pull herself together. "We need to get out of here. The sun is supposed to rise in—" she fumbled for her phone before I handed it back to her, "—about ten minutes." I immediately felt better. Following Clarissa's plans was something I was used to. Together, we gathered up her things and climbed out of my grave, using her shovel to push the soil back as best we could, and we walked out of the cemetery together, the sun rising at our backs.   Clarissa had always known how to make loud and spectacular mistakes. Even as a kid, she made spellwork look easy. When we were ten, I watched her bring back our class's pet guinea pig. We all huddled around Clarissa, crouched in the dirt. She held a chunk of gravel in her hands and closed her eyes for a moment, and we were all sure that she was faking, that nothing would happen. Then the guinea pig got up, and we had to race to catch it. Afterwards, the other kids ran to show our teacher. I stayed behind with Clarissa. She was on her back, staring up at the sky, tossing the piece of playground gravel that tethered the guinea pig's life up and down in her hand. "That was amazing," I told her. She shrugged, and coughed. "I missed him. What else was I supposed to do?" Then she looked at me and grinned, smile so bright I could feel it in my own stomach. "It was cool, wasn't it?" Clarissa wore that little piece of playground gravel she'd used for the spell on a chain around her wrist, humming with warmth for as long as that guinea pig was still alive. She kept adding to the chain, too, doing stupid things like bringing back songbirds in the park, using chunks of gemstones she kept in her pockets to store their life. They all went out, eventually—necromancy wasn't a ticket to eternal life—but she did it often enough that there was always something warm on her bracelet, always a little piece of life hanging around her wrist. When we were nineteen, nine years after she brought that guinea pig back to life and two weeks before I woke up with her in my grave, Clarissa asked me to go with her to a protest. Necromancy unsettled people, but it wasn't really as uncommon as everyone thought it was. Clarissa had explained it to me once. It was just healing, in the end, and there were plenty of people who could do that. Except putting enough force behind the spell to draw someone back from death required more ability than almost anyone had. Back when she was ten, people laughed, and told her that soon, she would know better than to do frivolous things like resurrect dead class pets. Telling Clarissa she couldn’t do something was never a good idea; I could have told them that. When we got older, no one thought it was cute anymore. She scared people. Historically, necromancers didn't turn out well, if you looked at Rasputin or van Hohenheim or Countess Bathory. Healers were dicey enough, if you asked the kind of people who campaigned against them working in hospitals or making vaccines. The day I died, I was with Clarissa at a protest against a local bill that would prevent the teaching of magic in schools. I wasn't really into politics, honestly, but Clarissa was spitting mad. "What do they think is going to happen?" she'd said, pacing back in forth in my apartment kitchen. "Magic is so dangerous, right? Well, if they don't teach kids anything then of course they're going to screw up, of course there's going to be accidents—you know my cousin, the one who can light fires? Can you imagine if he had no formal training?" I sat at the kitchen table and nodded. "There's a protest on 39th and Blackwood tomorrow night. Think of it as an early birthday present for me?" She didn't have to ask me if I would go with her, and I didn't have to tell her that I was coming. It was understood. That was who I was: I did what Clarissa asked. My dad didn't want me to go, but I was nineteen, so I didn't have to sneak out my window, the way I always used to whenever Clarissa had a bad idea. "Be careful, May," was all my father said as I left, right after I gave him instructions on reheating his dinner. And once we got there, I was careful, up until some asshole from the other side of the picket pushed Clarissa, and she pushed him back, teeth bared. Then, suddenly I wasn't anymore. Clarissa was dangerous when she got mad, and she shrugged me off when I tried to drag her back. She started yelling at the man who'd pushed her, and there were people all around us, and Clarissa wasn't listening to anything that I was saying in her ear. "I know you," the man said to Clarissa. That wasn't very surprising; most people around here knew about Clarissa. He pushed her a second time, harder, and she would have fallen if I wasn't in her way. "Clarissa, leave it." I steadied the both of us and rubbed at the bruises forming on my arm where she'd run into me. She ignored me. "You got something to say?" she asked the man. He didn't. What he did have was a mean right hook but terrible aim, and what I had was no self-preservation: I shoved my way in front of Clarissa, and I went down hard. He was a bit like Clarissa, I think—he didn't know when to stop. The last thing I remember was his boot in my face, and a sudden, terrible fear that he was going to break my nose. Touching it now, I didn't think he did. I could feel the place in the back of my skull, under my hair, where he'd got me instead.   We got some odd looks at the diner Clarissa took us to. That made sense—we both had dirt in our hair and smudged on our faces, and beyond that we didn't look much like we belonged together. I was wearing what I thought of as my synagogue dress, complete with pearls around my neck, but also a beanie I'd pulled from Clarissa's bag. Clarissa was dressed like she expected to be going grave-digging, in baggy jeans and boots, her hair pulled back into a bun. She still looked like she might pass out at any moment. It was obvious she'd been crying. It was six in the morning at a twenty-four hour diner, though, so mostly everyone just ignored us. Clarissa ordered coffee and eggs. I ordered tea, matzah ball soup, and a slice of banana cream pie. Even exhausted, Clarissa raised an eyebrow at me. I ignored her. We had more important things to worry about. "Clarissa, what the hell are we going to do? I can't exactly go home." If my dad had any sense, which I happened to know that he did, he would call the cops in two seconds. Clarissa's family would certainly do the same. We didn't have anywhere to go. An awful feeling crept into my stomach. There was no way this was going to work. When my food came, the soup gave me pause: matzah ball soup was my dad's favorite. But I couldn't go home. I would never make it for him again. When I looked up, Clarissa was watching me. "It's better when you make it, right?" she asked. I laughed and went back to eating. Clarissa picked at her eggs, and I ended up finishing half of them for her. "Do we have somewhere to sleep, at least?" I asked. Clarissa looked like she was about to fall over again. "I'm fine," she said, swaying a bit, which was so very her that I couldn't help but smile. "Of course you are. I could use a nap, though." She sighed. "Alright. There's a motel nearby. We can rest there and then we can do whatever you want." "Me?" I'm not exactly the planning type. "What, there's nothing you want to do? No last requests?" I stared at my hands, clutched tight around my tea. I didn't want to get caught, or for Clarissa to go to jail, or to never see my father again. I wanted things to go back to the way they had always been. I wanted to be alive again, and what Clarissa had done was close to that. But not quite. "I just want to spend time with you," was what I settled on. She put her hands over mine, and tilted her head until I had to look her in the eyes. "Okay," she said, reassuring, like she'd heard all the things I hadn't said. "It's gonna be fine, May." Her voice was certain and steady like the stones wrapped around her wrist, and just then, I believed her.   Clarissa took the first shower, and was out like a light the minute her head hit the pillow. I grinned, and wasn't even bothered when I discovered that she'd used up all the hot water. At least that was normal. After I dried my hair, I lay back on the other bed, not particularly tired. I couldn't help but think that if I fell asleep, the spell would snap, like a wire drawn too taut, and I'd never wake up again. That wasn't how this worked: anything Clarissa brought back would live out its natural lifespan. That guinea pig had lived to a very respectable age. I still couldn't bring myself to close my eyes. So I sat cross-legged on the scratchy motel comforter and turned on the news, volume off and closed captioning on. Clarissa slept like a log once she was out, but if she woke up she'd probably refuse to sleep again. I knew what I was going to see on the TV screen, but I still couldn't help but wince, seeing my grainy prom photo on display. Somebody had noticed that the dirt on my grave wasn't quite how they'd left it, or that Clarissa had broken the lock on the gate, or maybe they'd just checked the damn CCTV, and so of course it was all over the news. Necromancy scandals were rare, because most necromancers didn't have enough power to do what Clarissa had done, and all the ones that did had enough sense not to. I flipped through the channels for a while. There was coverage about the protest where I'd died, suddenly relevant again two weeks later. The police were looking for us, of course. There wasn't any doubt in anybody's mind what had happened—Clarissa was locally well known. We were on the national news, too. I watched Megyn Kelly's mouth move silently as the subtitles talked about how this was just another example of the need for greater laws monitoring necromancers—scratch that, all magic. I turned the TV off before she could start talking about Jesus and I put my head in my hands. After a while, Clarissa sat down beside me on the bed and put her hand on my back. She was very warm. Her hand was shaking a little, and I wondered if she was crying. I wanted to turn and hug her, bury my face in her neck, tell her what a goddamn idiot she was being. Still, I couldn't help but treasure the thought that she was doing all these stupid, ridiculous things for me, just like I'd always wanted her to. "May?" she asked, hesitantly, when I didn't move. "Is everything okay?" I looked up at her and smiled as brightly as I could. "Of course," I said, as if the answer was obvious. She wasn't crying like I'd thought. Her hands just weren’t very steady. "Let's go. We really shouldn't stay here, Clarissa." Clarissa stood. I helped her pack up our stuff. Her stuff, mostly. Everything fit into a single backpack, which I shouldered, glaring at Clarissa when she tried to take it. I followed her out the door.   We checked out of the motel, but we didn't make it to the train station, although it was only a few blocks away. There were two problems: people kept looking at us, speculatively, as if they were sure they'd seen our faces somewhere, and after about five minutes of walking Clarissa nearly collapsed, because between one step and the next it seemed that her legs couldn't hold her. I grabbed her just before she went down, so we both stumbled but didn't quite fall. "Clarissa?" I tried to get my arm under hers so that I could hold her up. "I'm fine," she said, and it was less endearing this time around. "No, you're not." I dragged her into the nearest store, an ice cream shop. I dumped Clarissa in a booth in the corner, grabbed her wallet out of her pocket, and went to buy something, both because it would look suspicious not to, and also because we could probably use it. When the girl at the counter handed me my cup of ice cream, she also handed me a wad of napkins. "For your friend," she said, sympathetic. I looked back at Clarissa, confused. She had her fingers pressed above her mouth, and her nose was bleeding. I winced. "There's a free clinic a couple blocks over," the girl at the counter offered. "I think they have a few healers around at this time of day." I thanked her, and took the ice cream and napkins back to the table. I handed Clarissa the napkins and sat down across from her as she pressed them to her face where her fingers had been. "Thanks," she said, a little bit muffled. "Are you going to tell me what's going on now?" She closed her eyes and tipped her head back against the vinyl seat, napkins still pressed to her nose. "It's just a reaction to the spell," she said. "I'll be okay in a little while." "A reaction is you sick with a cold for a week," I said, a little harsher than I intended. Clarissa opened her eyes. "This is different. I'm not stupid. It's never been this bad before." "Well, why do you think that is, May?" Clarissa snapped. "I've never done something like this before. I knew this might happen, so don't worry about it, okay? I have it under control." A thin stream of blood was leaking out from under the napkins. I grabbed another one off the table and leaned in to wipe it off for her. "Clearly," I said, and she glared at me. "You're going back to bed," I decided, and Clarissa sat forward so fast she probably made her nosebleed worse. "Absolutely not," she said. "You were right. We have to leave." I looked at her, sitting across the table and trembling. I didn't think she noticed she was doing it. I wanted to reach out to her and hold her. "We can stay for another night," I said. "There's something I need to get before we go, anyway. I can sneak into my apartment and grab it tonight, and you can rest, and we can leave in the morning. Okay?" She nodded, and didn't even ask what it was I needed so badly. It felt like there was a stone sinking in my gut. Clarissa was always asking questions, demanding answers. I wasn't used to being the one who had to protect her and I wasn't sure I liked it. I took her arm and led her out of the shop, so we could find another place to stay for the night, and Clarissa let herself be led.   I left Clarissa at the new motel and I walked home. The apartment wasn't far, but it was hot, and I was still wearing Clarissa's beanie and my velvet dress. When I got there, I went up the fire escape and climbed in my window, like I'd done so many times when I was younger. I hadn't seen my dad's car in the lot, and it was the middle of the day, so I had to hope that he wasn't home. My bedroom hadn't been touched. I grabbed some clothes and some money, shoving them into my backpack, and I didn't let myself spend too much time looking around. I'd left the book that I'd come for on the bookcase in the living room, although I had no way of knowing if it was still there. It was supposed to be my birthday present for Clarissa. She was always complaining about the lack of materials on necromancy, because almost all of them were rare or illegal or both, so I'd stalked eBay for a few months to get an old book for her. I didn't understand half of the information in it, but surely there was something in there that could help her. I had to at least look. When I walked into the living room, I heard a crash from the kitchen before I'd taken two steps. For a moment I thought my heart had stopped again, but it kept beating, much faster and louder than I liked. I pressed back against the wall the living room shared with the kitchen and prayed that whoever was home didn't walk in here. God, I shouldn't have come. Of all the stupid things I'd ever done for Clarissa, the one she didn't even ask for was what was finally going to screw us over. There was another clang from the kitchen. This one was the telltale sound of my father knocking over a pan while he was cooking. By reflex, I almost offered to help him, but I clamped my hand over my mouth and kept quiet. I shouldn't have bothered. I knew exactly what was going to happen next: my dad would curse, and throw the pan in the sink, and go to find a hand towel from the linen closet. Which was in the living room, of course, where I stood. I tried to step back into my bedroom before my father walked in, but there wasn't any time. I dropped my hand and bit my lip and desperately tried to think of what in the world I was going to tell him. The moment my father caught sight of me, I knew. The change in his face was immediate. I wanted to speak first, head off whatever he was going to say, but the words stuck in my throat like dirt. I choked and I said nothing. It felt like I'd been here before, and it took me a moment to realize why. My frozen feet and the sick feeling in my stomach and the words trapped in my throat, the thought that if I moved or spoke or did anything that he would hate me—I had done this before. I'd been thirteen when I'd come out. But back then, I'd known, deep down, that he wouldn't care. This time I knew that he would. "So it's true," he said. He folded and unfolded his arms, uncomfortable as I'd ever seen him. I wondered if he would stop me if I tried to leave. I couldn't make my legs move. "Dad." He took off his glasses and rubbed at his nose, and I closed my eyes against the tears fighting to escape. I didn't think I'd ever see him do that again. When I was thirteen, my father had opened his arms wide and hugged me, letting me hide my face in his chest. Now we stood apart, the few feet between us impassable. There was nothing stopping me from stepping forward and closing the gap. But I couldn't do it. If I did, he might step back. "I knew that girl was trouble," he said, looking not quite at me but at the space above my left shoulder. It was a trick he'd taught me for public speaking, a long time ago. I looked him in the eyes. "She's not," I said, and at least this conversation was familiar. We'd spoken this way about Clarissa hundreds of times. It’s awful, to have to admit that your parents were right. It didn't matter that Clarissa was trouble. It didn't matter that she'd made a mistake, was always making mistakes. She was still my friend. "I miss you," he said, and on the last word his voice broke. I wondered what it was like to have something you loved in front of you, wanting it with all your heart, and still knowing that you couldn't keep it. Then again, maybe I didn't have to wonder. "I'm right here, Dad," I said. "I'm the same as I was two weeks ago." He shook his head. "You're not. If you are, I'm going to have to bury you twice." I couldn't help it. I was stung. Who was I, if I wasn't me? I turned my face away, looking at the book sitting where I had left it on the mantle, and I said, "I miss you too." Dad looked at the book when I picked it up. "For Clarissa," he said, barely a question. I nodded. "Please don't call anyone," I said. "Clarissa was just—she's my friend. They'll never let her go." His jaw worked. "And you?" I did my best to smile. "I'll be fine. She'll take care of me." In the end, he nodded, and the last thing my father said to me was, "Goodbye." And I suppose that's more than most people get. I left the way I'd come, book clutched close to my chest.   I went back to the motel and settled on the rickety chair in the corner. Clarissa was still asleep, and I looked down at her present, sitting in my lap. The book was old and faded, pages falling out of its leather cover. I flipped through it. I'd spent a lot of time imagining the face Clarissa would make when I gave it to her. I tried to imagine Clarissa's expression if I told her that I'd gone home just to get a book on the off-chance that it might be able to help her, and I had to stop myself from laughing. I wished I hadn't seen my father. I'd known that I couldn't go back, but seeing him threw everything into sharp relief: my father would never hug me again, never smile at me, never tell me that everything would be all right. Clarissa had brought me back, and I meant what I'd said to him. I was still me. But except for her, my life was gone. Once, I would have thought that Clarissa would be enough. But now, I couldn't stop thinking of my father's face, of all the things he'd never say again. I looked down the book, opened it to the first page, and started to read.   Clarissa was still asleep when I finished. I curled up next to her on the blanket and closed my eyes and listened to her breathe. Her breathing wasn't very steady. She was shaking a little, even in her sleep, and her skin was so pale you'd think that she was the dead one. I was so stupid, thinking for even a minute that this could work, and so was Clarissa. I lay there for hours, fighting off sleep and watching her shake, until her eyes fluttered open and she looked straight at me. "Hey," she said, a little muzzily. I couldn't decide if I wanted to kiss her or hit her, so I asked her how she was feeling instead. "Fine," Clarissa said, struggling to sit up. I sat up too and put my face in my hands. "Did you find what you wanted?" she asked, sliding an arm around my shoulders, like I was the one who needed comforting. But she was warm, and I couldn't bring myself to shake her off. "Not really," I said, thinking of what I'd found in that book of hers. "Clarissa, what exactly are you hoping to get out of this, really?" We hadn't spoken about it, exactly, but it hung suspended between us: my existence was an abomination and a disgrace, and Clarissa was the same for making it happen. There was no place for us anywhere anymore. And there was another thing we hadn't talked about. I took a deep breath, and forced the words out: "Clarissa, this is killing you." She didn't seem surprised, which was the worst part of it, really. She'd known all along what she was doing to herself, and she did it anyway. It was just the stupid sort of thing Clarissa would do, knowing the consequences and not caring. Clarissa never knew when to stop. I loved her so much. She didn't say anything. I tipped my head back to stare at the ceiling. "I can't believe you," I said thickly. "I don't want you to die for me." "Well, I didn't want you to die," Clarissa said. "And you did anyway, and it was because of me. You can't expect me to just let that happen, not when I could—what's the point of all this, of all this shit I can do, if I couldn't help you? What was I supposed to do?" Her eyes were bloodshot and watery and she was trembling still, her hair falling in her face, and she was so, so beautiful. "Clarissa," I said. "Look. I just don't see how you think this is going to end." She looked at me, brow furrowed. "We'll figure something out," she said. "We'll catch a train tomorrow, and we'll keep running, and they'll have to stop looking eventually, and as long as we stay together, we'll be fine." She believed it, too. She wouldn't have said it if she didn't. We wouldn't be fine. Even if we never got caught, Clarissa's hands wouldn't stop shaking, her nose wouldn't stop bleeding, her teeth wouldn't stop chattering. I was killing her every minute I was alive. And no matter what, neither of us could ever go home. Clarissa hated being told she couldn't do something--the fact that I was here at all was proof of that. Sometimes, she just needed someone to stop her, if she wouldn't stop herself. I took her face in both my hands and I kissed her. It was funny. Since I'd met her, I could never remember a time when I didn't love Clarissa. I don't know why it never occurred to me, before all this, that she might be as hopeless for me as I was for her. She kissed me back. Of course she did. She kissed me back, because she'd broken every law of magic, was working herself literally to death, just to keep me with her. I sat beside her on the crappy motel bed, her hands in my hair, and felt her breath against my cheek. I closed my eyes against it and willed myself not to cry. She settled back on the bed, and I curled up beside her, so we were lying face to face. Clarissa breathed in deep, tucked her nose against the crook of my neck. "I thought I lost you," she said quietly. "I couldn't do nothing, May, you know I couldn't." I pushed her hair out of her face and kissed her forehead and held her hand, the one that had her bracelet, and I didn't say anything at all. Maybe it had all been worth it, for the chance to have this with Clarissa. Even for just a moment. She fell asleep with my hand running through hair, and I stole her bracelet. Some of the stones on it were cool, inert, and some were faintly warm, and the uneven chunk of amethyst that I knew had to be me was hot to the touch. The stone was rough; I could see the places on her wrist where it had cut into her skin. I untied the knot on the cord and pulled the amethyst off. I rummaged through the pile of our things in the corner until I found the crowbar from my grave. At the rickety table, I took out the book and opened it to the right section. I tucked the train ticket I'd bought for Clarissa between the pages and I left the other things I'd taken from my home for her: hair dye, a hat, baggy clothes, sunglasses, five hundred dollars from the emergency fund in my closet. Not much, but it might be enough to keep her free. And maybe Clarissa could have what I couldn't. I looked at the book again. I guess I should have known that reversing the spell would be so simple. All I had to do was break the stone, and the connection would sever. Clarissa would be fine. The crowbar was heavy in my hands. I turned it over a few times before I raised it over my head. I thought about my father, about all the years of kissing Clarissa I'd missed out on, about how angry and hurt she would be when she woke up. I thought of how Clarissa wanted so badly to protect everyone else, how desperately I wanted to be the one to save her, how she refused to let me, even when I'd died. Clarissa wanted me to live badly enough to destroy her entire life, and I was so used to wanting what Clarissa wanted. I'd tried to want what she wanted this time. I couldn't. I didn't want this. Mostly, though, I thought of the scratches the stone that tethered my soul had made on Clarissa's wrist, of her dying to keep me here. I looked at the amethyst and smiled, and I brought the crowbar down. END   “Gravedigging” was originally published in Cicada and is © Copyright Sarah Goldman 2017. This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library. You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, or by leaving reviews on iTunes. You can also pick up a free audio book by going to www.audibletrial.com/glittership or buy your own copy of the Spring 2018 issue at www.glittership.com/buy Thanks for listening, and we’ll be back soon with a GlitterShip original, “Sabuyashi Flies" by Sebastian Strange.

Ep. 4 Tests, Weight Loss and Red Hair.  Of mice and women: feeling comfortable in your own skin. Doing the math on weight loss, being labeled a villain. Love the song, hate the video. If I'd just quit drinking wine...Plus this week's coffee is sweet and silky smooth.

Hi and welcome back to Weekly Dev Tips. I’m your host Steve Smith, aka Ardalis. This is episode 32, in which we'll talk a little about money, salaries, and workplace taboos on sharing details about such things. If you’re enjoying these tips, please leave a comment or rating in your podcast app, tell a friend about the podcast, or follow us on twitter and retweet our episode announcements so we can increase our audience. I really appreciate it. How much do you make? This week we talk about money. Specifically, how do you feel about discussing your salary with your coworkers and peers? Why do you feel the way you do? Sponsor - Ardalis Services Does your development team need a force multiplier to level up their quality? Contact Ardalis Services to see how we can help. Show Notes / Transcript I suspect this episode will be both interesting and perhaps somewhat uncomfortable for many listeners. A lot of people have an innate aversion to discussing salary numbers, money, etc. Let's start by examining this, and then move on to look at ways you can maximize what you get in exchange for the value you provide to your employer or customer. Let's talk salary. I'll start, though since I've been self-employed for a while now, I'm going to cheat a bit and provide a quick story from early on in m career. When I got my first job in the late 90s, when the dot-com bubble was still expanding, I took an offer with a salary of $37,000. The consulting company I was working for was expanding rapidly. I was hired in August; another batch of new hires started in January. In speaking with them, I learned that they had been given offers of$42,000! I was understandably annoyed by this. Here I was, with six months' more experience and already providing value at a billable client and I was making 88% of what these new hires were making on day one. Let's stop here for a moment. What are you thinking as I relate this story? Did I break some unwritten rules by discussing salary with these new associates of mine? Was it my fault that I was annoyed by this perceived inequality? Maybe you're thinking, "Sure, you just demonstrated why it's a bad idea to talk salary with your coworkers, Steve. All it does is create bad blood and drama." If this is where you're coming from, I'm warning you now that I simply don't understand this position. I'll try to empathize, but at the end of the day I just don't get it, as will become clear in just a moment. If, after hearing the rest of the story, you want to help me understand why you still think keeping salary a secret is better for you, please leave me a note in the comments. So, why did I want to discuss salary with my coworkers? The answer is simple: I wanted data. I wanted intel. I wanted to be able to make informed decisions about my career. I had aggregate data at my fingertips in the form of annual surveys conducted by my school's career placement office, but I wanted to know what someone in the exact same position at the exact same company was making, and I was able to easily acquire this information by simply striking up a friendly conversation. Now, given this situation, what would you do? Regardless of whether you would ever actively inquire about salary, let's say your new team member volunteers their salary to you over lunch before you're able to stop them. The cat's out of the bag. You have the information. They're making a significant amount more than you, despite having less experience and having been hired into the same role. I imagine the following options are available: Do nothing. Forget about it. It's none of your business. Hold onto the information. Maybe consider it when you next get a pay raise or promotion, and use it to consider whether to ask for more. Start sending out resumes to other companies who might pay the same or more than what your company is now paying. If you get an offer, maybe your company will match it to keep you. Go to your manager and demand an increase. I'm probably leaving out some other options - feel free to add them in the show comments. Back to my story. After learning I was making $5k/year less than the batch of new hires, I went to my manager. I explained, respectfully, that I didn't think it was equitable for me to be making significantly less than the folks they'd just hired. My manager very quickly agreed to immediately adjust my salary to match, but asked me not to advertise that he was doing so to my coworkers. I agreed. In hindsight, perhaps I shouldn't have been so quick to agree to this, but at the time it seemed a small price to pay to get the immediate pay increase, and in any case it was just a verbal request, not a legal document I was asked to sign. So, who won and who lost in this story, if there were in fact any winners or losers? I'm happy with the outcome, since it meant I was able to keep up with the rapidly rising salaries of the time without having to change companies. I really liked where I worked and wasn't contemplating looking elsewhere. If I'd been ambivalent or hostile toward my current employer, I'd likely have taken a different approach. Did the new hires lose anything by sharing information with me? Not that I can tell. Some companies try to enact gag order policies that may go so far as to threaten employees with termination if they share compensation details, but most of these clauses are unenforceable in my experience. I am not a lawyer so do your own research before acting on this opinion, though. In any case, I wasn't asked how I knew what I knew, so no individual was called out as a result my acting on the information I acquired. That leaves my employer. They "lost" in that they now had to pay one more of their employees the same rate they were paying others in the same position. Their profit margin shrunk slightly. But they also won in that they retained a valuable employee who was almost always billing, even while the market grew even tighter for software developers. I stayed there for another 4 years because they continued to grow my compensation and I continued to enjoy working there. If after a year or two I'd found myself underpaid by 20% or more there, I'd very likely have jumped to another position, costing them a highly billable consultant which is how they earned all their revenue. Could this have gone badly? Perhaps. It's easy to say in hindsight that it was a good move, but what if instead of bumping my pay my manager had fired me for breaking the company's rules about discussing compensation (we didn't have any, but say we did). This was a risk, but I had risk tolerance and I felt the risk likelihood was small. I hadn't yet really expanded my lifestyle and expenses from that of a college student, Iso my expenses were small relative to my income, and I didn't yet have children. The market was also great, and I'm sure if I'd been let go I'd have gotten another offer within a few weeks. Like today in 2018, everybody seemed to be hiring. Would I have made the same choices if unemployment were high, layoffs were going on everywhere, and I didn't know how I'd make ends meet if I lost my job? Maybe not. But I'd still want as much accurate intel as I could get so that I could make the best decision for me given whatever the circumstances. Let's wrap up by considering who stands to gain from keeping salary details secret. For many listeners I suspect you can't imagine working somewhere that had transparent compensation details, but as a former Army officer I can tell you it's not a big deal. Everybody in the military, and in government service, knows exactly how much everybody else is making. You can check out the pay scale any time you want. It's not an issue. So, it shouldn't be assumed that secret compensation is somehow the only way to do things. It should by now be obvious that the ones who stand to gain the most from keeping salaries secret from one another are the company's owners. By paying different amounts for potentially the same work, they're able to increase profit margins. Pay differences can be warranted, and whether they are or not, they can seed discontent and hurt morale. Or they can empower employees to ask for what they think they're worth, as in my case, which can end up costing the company more in payroll. If companies pay different amounts to different individuals, and this is transparent, they need a way to justify this decision. This can require more communication. Just as it gives the employee more information and freedom to make decisions, it limits the company's freedom to negotiate from a position of having more information than the other party. In negotiations and economics in general, when one party has a better information than another, they can use this to their advantage and get themselves a better deal. By sharing information, employees aren't gaining an unfair advantage, they're merely eliminating an unfair advantage their employer previously held. Show Resources and Links What Color is Your Parachute (book) Great tips on job hunting and career - I read an earlier edition many years ago 2018 US Military Pay Scale

Business Agility Institute founder Evan Leybourn shares results from the 2018 Business Agility report at Agile2018. Connect with Evan on Twitter: @Eleybourn Download the Business Agility Report (2018). Add your voice to this report: Take the Business Agility Survey for 2019's report here. Follow @AgileToolkit. Visit LitheSpeed.com to help your organization embrace Business Agility.   Transcript: Evan Leybourn ‑ Agile2018   Announcer:  The Agile Toolkit. [music] Bob Payne:  I'm your host, Bob Payne. I'm here with Evan Leybourn from Australia. Evan, you're ahead of the Business Agility Institute, and you guys just released the Business Agility report today, you're at Agile 2018. I was leafing through it. There's a lot of great infographics and information behind those infographics. Do you want to just talk about how you went about getting the report? Then, maybe we can talk about some of the interesting results. Evan Leybourn:  Thanks, Bob. It's great to talk to you again. I absolutely love being on this podcast. I think it's my third time now. [laughs] Bob:  Is it third already? Evan:  Third already. Bob:  [laughs] Evan:  Third already. We put together the reports over the last couple of months based on the feedback we had from our members. A lot of people were asking for evidence. There's a lot of hearsay. There's a lot of anecdotes about business agility, and they wanted more proof. How does it work? Why does it work? Who does it work for? We went out, and we started sourcing information. We put out a survey. We'll share the link with your listeners in the text below the podcast. We got some fantastic insights which, I'll be honest, not many surprises. Most of the anecdotes that we hear, the data has borne it out, so that's actually pretty fantastic. Bob:  If not surprising, what are some of the important insights that folks were questioning and that now has been borne out in the data? Evan:  [laughs] We can probably narrow it down. I'll give you the really simple ones. The larger the company is, the less agile it is. I don't think that's a surprise to anybody at all. Bob:  [laughs] Evan:  Now, we have the data to show just how much more agile a small company is. In fact, we're doing some additional research now in terms of company thresholds, the size of organizations, and the operating model that's required for agility at those sizes. 15 to 50, 50 to 150, how do those sizes interface with agility, the practices, and the principles behind that? We know that agile organizations work differently. We know there are benefits, but how does size... If I'm 5‑person organization, then how I do agility is has to be different if I'm a 5,000‑person organization. We want to be able to outline that this generic information about X, Y, and Z, this is how it's specifically tailored to every size. Industries' wise, financial services, information technology and consulting, the top three industries who are adopting business agility right now. Both in terms of the quantity of organizations doing it as well as the maturity or the fluency that those organizations have. That's not really a surprise. We know from personal experience that banking and finance, every bank is trying to... Bob:  Huge competitive pressures with dust cycles. Evan:  FinTech eating their breakfast as they say. IT companies, Agile emerging technology and software. It's natural for these organizations to expand beyond the IT early, certainly earlier than other organizations. Consulting was a bit of a surprise. I wasn't expecting them in the top three. In fact they're number one to be precise. Now, cynical Evan thinks that, "Well, maybe the consulting organizations are just sort of..." Bob:  Self‑reporting a little higher. [laughs] Evan:  Self‑reporting a little higher because they're trying to say, "Hey, look how great we are." Less cynical Evan actually there's some logic behind it because consultants do need to be at the bleeding edge of business. If they're going to be transforming the client organizations, they've already got to be there. It does make sense that a lot of these consultancies are pushing the boundaries as much as they can. I think that's a natural behavior. Bob:  Did you get any breakout that was aggregated against those different industries? Were different moods of business agility? Evan:  No. Bob:  Was it really customer pitted or service or...? Evan:  We did slice and dice. We had some data scientists look at this information for us. They're the ones who provide a lot of the insights. We wanted to make sure that we were doing it meaningfully, specifically meaningfully. When we looked at the data, whether we sliced it at the company size, whether we sliced it by industry, not by industry, by company size or by high fluency, if we remove just the high fluency run the ones who are 9s and 10s, the outliers. Even if we normalize for who's reporting, whether it's the CEO reporting or an individual contributor because there was a difference. Even after all the slicing, those three industry still came out as 1, 2 and 3 so no matter how we sliced the data. It was pretty consistent actually. In fact, I mentioned that contributors, that was one of the few surprises that we got. Anecdotally, I assumed that the C‑Suite would over‑report and the individual contributors would under‑report maturity or fluency in business agility. We actually found that, because we had multiple respondents from the same company, in a single organization we thought they'd be different, but they were actually within 0.5 of a point from each other. Bob:  That's probably... Evan:  It's statistically... Bob:  ...insignificant. Evan:  ...insignificant. Now, there is a trend. Yes, the CEO is 0.5 higher than the individual contributors and line managers and senior leaders. Senior executives fall on that trend line, but it's quite negligible. The big surprise was we invited external consultants to assess the maturity, the business agility, fluency of their client organizations. They were about 15 percent lower on average. Bob:  The client organizations. Evan:  Yes. When the external parties assessed them, they assessed them 15 points lower. 1.5 points lower, 15 percent lower than themselves. Bob:  That may make sense with your transformational model... Evan:  It could. Bob:  ...as well, because I can't really help unless I'm in some aspects better at it than the organization. Evan:  Yeah, it's interesting. We need to do some further investigation as to why that's the case. My gut feeling is that there's probably two main reasons. The first being the rose‑colored glasses that happen within an organization. You see the transformation, you see you're making change, and it looks a little bit better, but the people from the outside are comparing you against... Bob:  Other people. Evan:  ...other people who are better. As an outsider, what you rate as a five, I rate as a three, just because I'm seeing that's a five over there. The inverse is also true. Bob:  We probably have different north stars that we're measuring against. Evan:  That's it. Maybe someone who's outside doesn't see a lot of the good. They're dealing with the procurement processes, they're dealing with the contracting processes, which are painful in almost every organization. They would underreport their client organization because the business agility hasn't hit procurement yet. It's just hit how employees are being engaged. Maybe they're underreporting for that reason as well. Bob:  Was the survey both public and private sector? Evan:  It was actually mostly private sector. We had a small number of respondents from the public sector, two or three percent. Though that data has mostly been excluded from the report just because there wasn't enough data points to meaningfully assess that information. We're hoping that version two of this report will be able to draw the public sector view. Because we are doing the government's Agility Conference in November, I think it would be a good idea to actually maybe create a government version where we survey the government organizations before the conference and maybe put something together for them. Bob:  Even if we have some objectives out of the conference, what do we want people to take away, even if it's a simple survey of, before they attend the conference, after, how much more do they know about business agility, if they're not already executing in that way. I really see, and I know we've talked about this, on the committee calls... [laughter] Bob:  ...the Government Business Agility Conference. It is just the early days in many, many government agencies on the delivery side, and without delivery, you can't turn the crank on the major business outcomes. Evan:  Spot on. I talk a lot about theory of constraints and the theory of...I've probably mentioned this in a previous podcast, but an organization can only be as agile as its least agile part. In business, 30 years ago, that was software, so we invent Agile. 10 years ago, that was operations, so we invent DevOps. Today, in business, it's HR, it's finance... Bob:  [inaudible 10:00] . Evan:  ...but government is probably still where the business was 20 years ago. In many government organizations, they're only now getting the benefits of Agile, let alone DevOps and full‑on business agility which is even in the future. That being said, we have some great stories, some great case studies in the government space around policy developments being done in using Agile, service delivery for social services being delivered using Agile mindsets and techniques around the creation of citizen‑centric approaches. Everything from budget games being done in San Jose, I think it was San Jose. If you Google, you'll find out exactly where it's being run, where they crowdsource the budget from citizens using Agile game theory. It's absolutely fantastic. Bob:  I was just chatting with somebody from a government agency. We were actually talking about using the Colleague Letter of Understanding with the Morningstar as a way of creating a rather hierarchical structure, a mesh commitment structure, within that organization. There're little pockets of these ideas taking hold. Evan:  We have a video from the very first business agility conference in New York in 2017. The deputy CIO of the State of Washington had adopted holacracy in the state government. I used to be a public servant, this is 10 years ago. The thought of holacracy in government was mind‑blowing. I couldn't believe they could even do that. They did and a huge success. Bob:  It can get a little tricky. I don't know if the state governments are the same but federal sometimes gets tricky when you hit the unions. [laughter] Evan:  Yes. In that scenario, in the institute, we're developing some position papers, some white papers on various complex topics. Incentives, motivation reward is a white paper that's being released tomorrow, in fact. By the time you listen to this, it'll already be released, and we'll share the link. One of the next white papers that we're going to put out there is business agility in a unionized environments, because a lot of our members are in united environments that's complex. Bob:  We may often give entities like the bureaucratic...paint them with a bureaucratic brush, but actually another agency that we did some work in, they were partners in creating an open workspace environment for everybody. Bob:  Going back to the report, some of the key findings that we did come up with, market success is one of the highest benefits of business agility, which I would actually be surprised by. Not because I don't believe that business agility brings with it financial and market success measures, but I didn't think as a community that we were there yet. I thought we had a while to go, that the benefits move on softer. Now, we have some great quotes, some great feedback from the survey respondents saying that now they have gained more customers, greater customer satisfaction, more repeat business through the adoption of business agility. The usual ones they are around, better way of working, and so forth. Bob:  Retention of clients. Evan:  Retention of clients, yeah. Bob:  Competitive advantage. I see better ways of working, came in at 16 percent, collaboration, communication, not shocking 14, and engagement up as well. That's what we see in the VersionOne survey on the IT delivery side, that engagement goes up a lot. Evan:  When we look at challenges, the top challenge, which should be of no surprise to anybody, is leadership. Leaders love them, but they can either make or break a transformation based on the culture that they help to instill in an organization. Buy‑in is number two or three in the challenges. What's the next one? That's embarrassing. I don't... Bob:  Just trying to find the page right now. [laughter] Bob:  Leadership, lack of buy‑in, inappropriate organizational design. Evan:  Of course, old design. Sorry, I should remember that one. It's off my head. Basically, the value stream is broken. Bob:  The silos. Evan:  The silos. When work goes from team to team to team, every hand off adds complexity and delays. An agile organization is one where the value stream is as much as possible contained in a single cohesive team. I don't mean a small team, those teams can be big, but the ownership, the accountability is held singly from ideation to customer delivery. Companies still struggle with that, but that's changing. We're seeing that change in companies although even in government organizations. Bob:  Even if you can get a decent alignment of the silos to create those, not solid line report, but dotted line to the value stream, that can go a long ways. In thinking about the market's success statistic, I actually think that makes sense because if we look at the...Again, I don't want to compare you guys, the VersionOne survey, but I'm... [crosstalk] Evan:  ...is due. We've admired the VersionOne survey for years. Bob:  It has been a valuable tool. Evan:  It's one of the reasons we created this is to go [inaudible 15:53] . Bob:  Number one is better ability to manage change. What do markets want? They want responsive goods and services. Evan:  The market will evolve faster than the company. It's why startups can out‑compete a legacy large organization who's got hundred times the budget, a thousand times the market share. They're dominated and overtaken by a tiny startup because the startup is able to adapt and provide a service that the customers want as opposed to what has been delivered for the last 20 or 30 years, which maybe what the customers wanted 30 years ago, but time moves on. I know Uber and Airbnb and everything else. Those examples are trotted out every single time if someone talks about market agility or market entity. Bob:  [inaudible 16:48] . [laughter] Bob:  [inaudible 16:50] is running in my head. Evan:  They're the obvious ones, but it doesn't matter what industry you're in. I spent the last four years living in Singapore, and every bank there had a decent revenue coming out of international remittance, sending money home. Australians, Filipinos, Indians would send money back to their home countries through the banks. Within the space of two years, the FinTechs emerged. They had better, faster, cheaper services, and the banks lost a couple of percent of their top line overnight. Bob:  We get [inaudible 17:23] all the time. That's just one possible transactional character. Evan:  If you put yourself in the shoes of a bank, no one's going to take away the deposit account because that's not a...Maybe I could be lying but I don't think that's a disruptable service, partly because there's no money in a deposit account. Banks make their money out of credit cards and all these transactions, and all these other things, so the FinTechs are coming in. Bob:  They can be in the right market if you've got some liquid cash that you're... [crosstalk] Evan:  That's certainly not where the banks are making their profit. Bob:  No. Evan:  The banks are looking at this going, all of the stuff they're doing that are high profit, the FinTechs can come in and do it better, faster, cheaper. All they're going to be left with is the slow, low‑profit services, like core banking. Now, they're desperately trying to become FinTechs themselves. If I'd walk into a bank 10 years ago and let's say, "Let's create an agile bank," I would've been laughed out. Now, they're coming to us saying, "How do we become an agile bank?" Bob:  "How do we disrupt ourselves before someone else does?" Evan:  That's it. I use banking as an example. The same is true in utilities, the same is true in healthcare, engineering. Any industry which you think is undisruptable, I guarantee you, will be disrupted within five years. Bob:  We're seeing people fall off the Fortune 500 lists. Evan:  57 percent of the 1983 Fortune 500 no longer exists. Bob:  Not even just off the list. Just out of existence. Evan:  Some have been acquired, some have gone through merges, some have gone through divestments. They're a fraction of what they were. Others have gone bankrupt. Some have come out of bankruptcy. They're still nothing. Bob:  We'll have the link to the report. Where can folks learn about the Business Agility Institute? Evan:  Thanks. We'll put the links below, businessagility.institute. I love the fact that .institute is a top‑level domain. Bob:  [laughs] Evan:  We bought that. Bob:  .institutionalized. [laughter] Evan:  That's what I should be. Absolutely. Businessagility.institute, you'll find all the information. We're a membership organization. I do encourage all your listeners to join up as a member. Help support us, help support the community, and develop new and great research. The inverse is true as well. It's not just a one‑way, we'll provide you things. We want you to share your stories with us. If you have a case study, if you would like us to create a white paper on a topic, ask us. We will do our best to actually build that for the community. Bob:  Thank you very much. Evan:  No, thank you very much, Bob. Until next time. Bob:  Until next time. Evan:  [laughs] Thank you. Bob:  The Agile Toolkit Podcast is brought to you by LitheSpeed. Thanks for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed today's show. If you'd like to give feedback or be on the show, you can ping me on Twitter. I am @agiletoolkit. You can also reach me at bob.payne@lithespeed.com. For more free resources, transcripts of the show and information about our services, head over to lithespeed.com. Thanks for listening. [music]  

Captain Jim Lovell was the Spacecraft Commander of Apollo 13. The mission was meant to be the third moon landing attempt, but  infamously was cut short when a tank exploded. Don’t miss hearing this epic piece of history from the man who lived it. Jim Lovell also shares how he attained his dream of becoming an astronaut in spite of growing up poor and fatherless during the Great Depression. Jim’s unfiltered look at what it was like aboard Apollo 13, what it took to get there and what it took to get back to earth safely will unearth keys to live inspired as a leader, team player and dreamer. Don’t miss this episode. SHOW NOTES: Read Jim Lovell's book Apollo 13. Check out the Apollo 13 movie by Ron Howard. How did you keep a right mind individually and as a team in the face of so many challenges? "We had no solutions, all we knew was we'd lose oxygen soon. Any situation like this, you have to keep your cool and keep a positive attitude. If I had curled up and waited for the emergency to happen, I’d still be there waiting. The three of us talked through what was good and what was bad; the ground team analyzed with us. We talked through what tools we had and how we could make them work for us. We decided one by one what was necessary and what we had to do to overcome." When the odds are that long, how do you respond? "We thought about what we had to overcome, specifically:  We had to figure out how to get back on course to get home.  We had to decide what we had to turn off to save critical energy. We had to realize that each time we, we were slowly poisoning ourselves with carbon dioxide. We had to learn how to connect our current system to the old one because they weren't built to connect. See the famous"Earthrise" photo (taken by Lunar Module Pilot Anders on Apollo 8) we reference here. If you like this podcast, you will love Live Inspired IN STUDIO. It's my membership community where like-minded friends join me via live webcast to live inspired together. Registration opens soon! Join the waitlist. CAPTAIN JIM LOVELL’S LIVE INSPIRED 7 1. What is the best book you’ve ever read? The best book is the one I wrote! If you were moved hearing about Jim's journey, check out his book. 2. What is a characteristic or trait that you possessed as a child that you wish you still exhibited today? I wish I was a bit more aggressive. I could have done more work if I had a more aggressive approach to life. There are always things you think about, "Oh, I wish I had done that. After Apollo 8, there are things I know now, that I wish I had shared with the joint congress back then. 3. Your house is on fire, all living things and people are out. You have the opportunity to run in and grab one item. What would it be? The term paper I wrote my first class year at the Naval Academy because that gave me the incentive to continue.  4. You are sitting on a bench overlooking a gorgeous beach. You have the opportunity to have a long conversation with anyone living or dead. Who would it be? Charles Lindbergh was my hero when I was a boy. We could both think about what we accomplished.  5. What is the best advice you've ever received? My Captain who told me to go to the Naval Academy. During my second year at the Naval Academy, the Korean War started. If I'd stayed in my previous program, I’d have gone to Korea and the program was cancelled. 6. What advice would you give your 20-year-old self? Be adventuresome. I was thinking about myself. I was pretty much on my own. 7. It’s been said that all great people can have their lives summed up in one sentence. How do you want yours to read? That I added a little knowledge to our space activities.  *** If you enjoyed today’s episode: Subscribe, rate & review wherever you get your podcasts. See you here next Thursday! Live Inspired with John every day on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram and get his Monday Motivation email: www.JohnOLearyInspires.com/Monday-Morning  Get my #1 national best selling book ON FIRE, here. Or, read the first chapters for free, here. If you like this podcast, you will love Live Inspired IN STUDIO. It's my membership community where like-minded friends join me via live webcast to live inspired together. Registration opens soon! Join the waitlist.

Show notes... What it was like for Jane to start her first business “Sometimes you can take your business idea and morph it into something else and that doesn’t mean it was a failure. It was something that you needed to go through to be in the model that you really needed to be in." "If I'd have known how much work my first business was going to be and how hard it was going to be to build it, I probably would’ve never have started in the first place." "You have to build a business that’s not dependent on you in the center." "I sold the business and kept the marriage." "I tried the Martha Stewart thing. I planted a garden I tried baking, but eventually, I realized that I’m an entrepreneur. It’s who I am." "We decided that we would never base our businesses on the need for money. We decided that we would base it on our values and keep a relationship first." "No one ever pulled me aside when I had my first business and told me that you actually get to have your vision and a life." "It’s around trusting that your ideal clients will show up and that they’ll be willing to pay what you’re charging." "People want to know that you’re living your truth." "I will always turn away business if it doesn’t resonate with me in terms of my ideal client." "In business, the quality of your life is determined by the quality of your clients." "I look for appreciation in my clients." How to launch your new business - Be really clear about your vision. - Create a five-year vision of what is possible. Go from thoughts to pictures to words to numbers. "There’s something powerful when you write it down and claim it" How Jane is living a Wi-Fi lifestyle... - Jane and her husband are living where they want and she thinks that part of a Wi-Fi lifestyle is living a minimalist lifestyle so that you have the flexibility to go where you want. She’s not tied down by "stuff." - Jane is also able to visit her 90-year-old mother quite frequently which she probably couldn’t do if she was tied down to a typical 9-to-5. She says one of the greatest benefits is being able to care for her the way her mother once cared for her. "In business leverage is getting the greatest return for the least amount of effort." "Build a support team. Automate the delivery of your genius." "Automate the sales process and qualify people before you close them or pick up the phone." "Build a dream team and keep them. Have tools for them. Do a weekly recap." Book: You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living ... "If you want to live I Wi-Fi lifestyle you’re going to have to be bad ass. There’s always another level of badassery." "I’m not here for being satisfied. I’m here for amazing." Tool - Use an assessment to know where people are at in the process. To understand where people are at and personalize communication. Cause - Bakashana.org - An organization in Zambia that helps girls go to school who otherwise wouldn’t have the opportunity to go. Offer: Rockyourbizquiz.com A quiz that will help you figure out where you’re at in your business. What areas do you need to pay attention to help you get to the next level? For more see FuelRadio.com

#112: How can I convince my spouse to invest in low-fee index funds? How should my fiancé and I combine our finances? If I'd like to invest in rental properties, should I also buy stocks? Former financial planner Joe Saul-Sehy joins me to tackle these audience questions and more. Thomas asks: My wife is suspicious of Vanguard. She questions how they could stay in business while charging low fees -- isn't there a catch? She's also reluctant about investing the majority of our money in a broad-market index fund like VTSAX. She'd prefer more diversification. Recently, we met with a major brokerage firm that charges a 1.75 percent management fee. How can I get my wife to see the detrimental effects of choosing this high-fee broker? Shy asks: My fiancé and I are getting married soon. We both live with our families at the moment; we'll form a new household after our wedding. Neither of us has ever lived independently before. How should we budget for this, given that we're not sure what expenses to expect? Also, any tips on how to commingle finances? Paris asks: I'd like to invest in rental properties. Should I still make stock market investments? Should I contribute to a 401k? Kristin asks: I've been DIY'ing my household's finances and taxes. So far, our situation has been simple. However, in a few years, my husband is going to retire. When this happens, we'd like to sell our home, perhaps invest in rental properties, and move either out-of-state or out-of-country. Our financial and tax situation is about to become a lot more complicated. I'd like to talk to a financial professional ... but whom should I choose? Should I hire a financial coach? a financial planner? an accountant? an investment advisor? someone else? We tackle these four questions on today's show. Enjoy! ______ Resources Mentioned: Thomas: Calculator - How do expenses impact fund returns? https://www.calcxml.com/do/inv12 Article - How a 1% fee could cost $590,000 in retirement savings https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/investing/millennial-retirement-fees-one-percent-half-million-savings-impact/ Article - The Impact of Investment Costs https://investor.vanguard.com/investing/how-to-invest/impact-of-costs Shy: Article - The Anti-Budget http://affordanything.com/2013/03/05/anti-budget-or-80-20-budge/ Article - Three Methods for Co-Mingling a Couple's Finances https://www.thebalance.com/three-methods-for-co-mingling-a-couple-s-finances-453849 Kristin: FINRA Broker Check website CFP.net Guidevine (website) XY Planning Network

ANDREW. MEETS. KYLE!!! And the crowd roars. (See photo below) Ten years after the release of Deathly Hallows, Laura reflects on her life choice. Andrew airs those life choices for all to see on Patreon. MySpace struggles with a serious security flaw that lets you log into someone's profile with just their birthday and email address. In related news: the hosts learn MySpace still exists. "If I'd known he wouldn't be a willing pawn in my sham government, I wouldn't have picked him!" said the President of the United States. ALMOST VERBATIM. LIKE REALLY. Obamacare lives... for now. Don't drop your guard. And don't pretend you're never gonna fly United again cause you fuckin will. Hidden from the Headlines: our own imminent death. Surprise, bitch! and AP Choice make comebacks, with a question about the Founding Fathers that was divinely inspired just for one of us. And this week in After Dark: We parse the ramifications of John McCain's cancer diagnosis and pray to all that is holy he'll be all right. Voicemails!!! Ya'll need Jesus. Devil's Advocate takes a swing at Warren Buffett and the abhorrent practice of charitable giving. #BootstrapsNation

Even after divorce you may find yourself running away with a handsome stranger to a foreign land...complete with happy endings, food and intuition and how to get yourself some more clarity in your life.And at the end of this episode I'll share with you one of my favorite things to eat to help increase your intuition – which could really come in handy if you've got a tough decision to make like our guest Darla did. Our guest, Darla AntoineI am super excited to be joined here today for our story by Darla Antoine. Darla is a soul coach, and she works with the elements of what she calls Sacred Darkness, such as dreamwork, divination and deathwork (which is not as scary as it sounds, she tells me). Darla will tell you a bit more about what she does later on, but first I really want you to hear her story which I just can't wait to share with you because it's gonna be great!So Darla welcome to the Clean Food, Dirty Stories podcast! I'm really excited to have you here today!Darla: I'm excited to be here Barbara!Me: It's really great, I mean, I can't wait to hear your story because when you told me about it, I was like “That could have happened to me!”Darla: I know, right? Me: Because we've both had kind of like crazy pasts. And I know that it starts with a husband and kind of moves on from there with the mysterious stranger. So do you want to tell us what happened?Darla: Sure, OK.Darla's storySo I got married young, I was about 22 years old which was in 2004 and I loved my first husband, obviously. We're both from Washington State and we moved to Iowa.He started going to grad school to become a chiropractor, I started to go to grad school in New Mexico for intercultural communication. The last year of his chiropractic school, he had to work under a chiropractor, so we moved to Spain.Learning Spanish from very youngEver since I was a little girl, I always knew that I'd be moving to a Spanish-speaking country. At 6 years old I was trying to teach myself Spanish, I just knew I needed to learn Spanish.Me: Oh that's so cute!Darla: Yeah, and so this was it. We were moving to Spain and he knew he was gonna work under a doctor in Spain and we were gonna stay in Spain for as long as we wanted, and that whole thing. And I was like “Yes! It's finally happening!” I was about 26 years old at this point.But the long distance...I was living in New Mexico, he was living in Iowa and Spain. And we were only seeing each other every few months, which started to weigh on the relationship and there were other issues...Me: Oh, so you didn't go to Spain with him then?Darla: I did, but I also was going to grad school so in summer breaks or on vacation I'd take time off to go and work on our relationship.Whose dream will come true: mine or yours?But anyway we had a great time in Spain, but the distance was wearing on us and there were other issues about...Have you seen the movie LaLa Land?Me: No, but I know lots of people have.Darla: Yes, lots of people have. And the movie ends not the way you think it's going to end. It's very obvious that if the couple had ended up together, that only one of their dreams would come true. Not both of their dreams would come true.So that's how it was with my ex-husband. If I'd stayed with him, his dreams would have come true but my dreams wouldn't. I would just be the supporting role, and blah blah blah.So I was in a very tough position of walking away from our life in Spain in our relationship and going alone on my own and that's what my gut was telling me. I had a very profound dream that backed that up, and I went to a psychic for the first time in my life. She told me, she confirmed what I was feeling and confirmed that yes there was another life waiting for me if I wanted it, and that soon I would be travelling to Costa Rica for research. And I would meet someone there, and this someone would be involved in sustainability, eco living and such. I thought “OK, that's interesting”.And then I asked her some more questions and I got off the phone and made the tough decision. Not just right then and there, but over the next few weeks I slowly dissolved our marriage. It was very difficult.I left Spain and came back to the States and then I had taken the semester off from grad school. I wasn't in grad school in New Mexico, I was up in Washington State with my parents. You know, 26, 27 years old, living with my parents again.Me: I know what that's like, I did that once, it wasn't fun.Looking for a farmDarla: So it was this time of year, late March, early April, and I thought well I need to keep my focus on the future so I don't go crazy.I was studying intercultural communication and I wrote my masters thesis on how food creates cultural identity and legacy, so I thought “I'm gonna get out of the library and I'm gonna go work and visit farms and talk about how food is affecting people's cultural identity and their cultural legacy.So I started looking for permaculture farms in the Washington State, British Columbia area. And somehow I landed on a site for a permaculture farm in Costa Rica.Me: Uh-oh!Darla: Yeah! The psychic's words from 3 weeks ago? I totally didn't think even about it, it didn't even cross my mind. I'd forgotten what she'd said.So I thought “well this is interesting”. I sent them an email, and they wrote right back and they said “We'd love to have you come and volunteer, we could use you next month”. And I'm like “Next month is 10 days away, I should ask my husband about this” and I thought “I don't have to ask my husband about this, he's not gonna be my husband much longer”.Then I thought, “I should ask my mom about this” and I thought “No, no, I'm 26 years old, I don't have to ask my mom about this!” So I had like almost no money, I booked the ticket and did a happy dance because I was stepping into my own adulthood, making my own decisions, doing what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it, and it felt really good!10 days later I was being dropped off at the end of a road in Costa Rica. And it wasn't until I had booked the ticket and wrote back that yes I'd be there in 10 days...That's when I remembered the psychic's words that I'd be going to Costa Rica for research.Me: Wow!Darla: And I got goosebumps, I thought “Oh my gosh, something's gonna happen!”Life on a hippy farmIt was great! It ended up being like a really disorganized hippy farm. I didn't learn anything about permaculture!Me: That's hysterical!Darla: I was disappointed but then I just embraced it. I was like “You know what? This is like summer camp for adults. This is fine”.I was gonna stay for a month but I ended up extending my stay for two months and I didn't have any money to pay the $300 to stay there for a month. So I made a trade: I would be the cook for the second month in exchange for staying. And so when you're the cook for 20 people, you're cooking all day.Me: Yeah, I know what that's like too!Darla: Yeah! So the first month was all summer camp and the second month was like work. But it was what I needed. I got to be around people who didn't know me as so-and-so's wife. They just were meeting me at face value and embracing me and loving me, and some of the people I met there are still really dear friends today.Me: And how was your Spanish at that time?Darla: It was pretty good. It wasn't as good as I thought it was, but it was pretty good because I'd been living in Spain. And I took Spanish in high school and college because I just always knew that I needed to learn Spanish. It's the only foreign language I've bothered to learn.From summer camp to full time cookSo about 3 weeks into my time there I was cooking. I wasn't officially the cook yet, but I was filling in for someone and I was cooking. And the guy who owns this farm also used to own a tour guiding company. He would bring in mostly college students who were on a tour. They would come in through his farm for a day or two and learn about permaculture and then go on the rest of their tour in the country.So one of these tours was coming through, there were about 18 college students. I was told they would be here at about 8 pm. Now there are two ways to get to this farm: you could hike through the jungle for an hour and a half, or you could take a 30-minute boat ride. It was very isolated which was perfect for me.So I was told that they were going to be walking in and the next day boating out and to have dinner ready by 4, they'd be arriving by 3, perfect. They'd be led by their Costa Rican tour guide. OK.And one day, among the vegetables...I'm in the kitchen and I'm chopping vegetables and all of a sudden there's this redhead standing in my kitchen. He's decked out in all this fancy gear. Fancy outdoor gear. And I'm thinking because he's pale-skinned and redheaded, “He must be one of the professors”. He looked about 30 years old. The group's arriving. And sure enough I see some college students walking in behind him.Well I immediately get super annoyed with him. I'm like “Who is this guy?” I don't see the Costa Rican tour guide anywhere.A friend and I had just gotten lost on that trail between the farm and the nearest town the week before. It's a very difficult trail, you need to know what you're doing.I'm like “Here's some hotshot young professor, he's ditched the tour guide, showing off, he's wearing a whole bunch of gear he's never gonna wear again, it's obviously all brand new...”Me: It's interesting how many assumptions you made though, right?Darla: I made so many assumptions! And I was so annoyed. And then I saw the way he was looking at me. Then I thought “Oh my God, this guy's gonna be a pain, he's gonna want to flirt with me...”So here's the thing, I very seriously thought, “He's gonna want me to move to Michigan to the suburbs and have babies!”Me: Oh that's hysterical!Darla: I don't know why Michigan, but Michigan popped up and I was like “I don't want to move to the suburbs and have babies in Michigan! No offense.”Me: Now I'm laughing because I know what happens afterwards, right?Darla: So yes, but then he thought I was Costa Rican. He opened his mouth to introduce himself and it was in Spanish, in perfect, 'this is my first language' Spanish. Not 'I've learned Spanish really well and I can introduce myself' Spanish. It was perfect Spanish.And OK, well, I stopped, my eyes popped out, my mouth might have dropped open a little bit, and I was like “OK well you just got more interesting!” I was kind of shocked and I didn't say anything, so then he took my shock for not understanding, and he switched to perfect, 'this is my first language' English!He said “Hi, I'm Andy, I'm the tour guide”. And I was like, “OK, hello!”Me: All your assumptions were gone, right?Darla: All my assumptions were gone, which was wonderful! It was nice to be surprised. In less than 24 hours...And there was definitely some attraction between us, but he remained very professional. He was there at the farm for less than 24 hours, so he didn't try to sneak off into the bushes with me...Me: Did you regret that?Darla: Yeah! But then I thought well, he doesn't just hit on every cute girl he comes across, this is something. So it turns out his parents emigrated to Costa Rica when he was in the womb, when his mother was pregnant with him, from Michigan! They came from Michigan in 1978 and moved to Costa Rica and he had been born and raised in Costa Rica by US immigrant parents.And before they left the next day, we exchanged email addresses and he said, “I don't care when you come back to Costa Rica, I don't care if it's next month, next week, one year, two years from now, you let me know the next time you come back to Costa Rica and I'm gonna take you out on a date”.Me: Oh! It's like something out of a movie!Darla: Yeah, it really was! But I thought, “well you're cute but I'm never gonna see you again”. I took his email address and neither one of us were big on Facebook but we eventually added each other to Facebook and I went back to New Mexico to finish my graduate degree, I got another boyfriend and kind of forgot about him, honestly.Two years later...And twice over the course of two years he emailed me via Facebook and all the conversation was “How are you?” “I'm fine, how are you?” “I'm fine” “Good”. That was it. Hardly no conversation at all.Me: Wow.Darla: Yeah. But then I was finishing grad school and I thought “You know, I'm gonna go back to Costa Rica, that's really where I feel like I started to become my own adult. And I'm gonna go back for a few weeks and go visit friends that I made there before I go get a job and have to ask a boss for permission for vacation”.So I was making plans to go back to Costa Rica when he emailed me, Andy, this guy in Costa Rica. He emailed me out of the blue. And I'm like “Oh actually I'm coming to Costa Rica, do you still want to go on that date?” And I thought he could have been married with kids, then, I don't know.Me: Yeah, because it was two years later, right?Darla: Yeah, it was two years later. And he immediately wrote back and said “Let me know when you're coming and I'll pick you up at the airport”.Me: Ohhhhh!Darla: And I thought, “Oh dear!”Falling in love...So it went from being seeing him for a night, going on a date, to spending the entire 3 weeks with him. He drove me all over the country, we fell in love.Now here's the thing: the psychic said I would meet someone in Costa Rica and that they would be involved in sustainable living. And he has an organic sustainable farm, he and his sisters run an eco lodge, so yeah.We live on an organic, sustainable homestead now in Costa Rica, and it's been 6 years. Actually 6 years earlier this week, we celebrated it's been 6 years since I came to Costa Rica to see him, and we've got two little boys, and we're madly in love with each other still.Me: Oh wow! That's such a nice story! And it has a happy ending as well, doesn't it?Darla: It does, yeah.Me: And one of the things that came out when we were talking about this was you were saying how your intuition really helped you to make some of the right decisions. Do you want to say more about that? Were there specific moments when you just tuned into yourself? And how did you do that?Darla: Yes, so my intuition really started picking up at the same time as my marriage started ending. And I've always been a really strong dreamer. Dreaming has always been a really great way to get messages to me from the divine.So one was I had a dream right before I ended it with my husband that confirmed that I needed to end it. Two was right before I came here to visit Andy, speaking of dreams, anyway. A most powerful dreamI woke up in the early morning and I started coughing. Like I'd been sleeping with my mouth open or something and my throat was dry. So I started coughing and I needed to get some water. There was water across my room on my desk, but I was still dreaming. And I had this very vivid image of like my astral body or something in the cosmos. Like I was flying through stars, I've never consciously remembered something like this.And I was zooming to get back to my body because my body needed me, but there were these two orbs of light going with me. Like we'd been out playing in the cosmos. I got back into my body and I woke up, but these orbs of light were laughing at me. They were taunting me. They were like “Ha ha, look who has a body! Look who needs to get back to their body! Ha ha!”And as I got back into my body and I started becoming conscious, I could still see and hear them and the more I woke up, the more they faded. Then I tried to get up out of bed to go get the water and I fell to the floor, like I couldn't operate my body. I still wasn't completely back into it.Me: Wow!Darla: I started laughing and I had to like drag myself across the floor to get my glass of waterMe: Yeah cause you must have been really thirsty!Darla: Yeah! By the time I'd had a glass of water I had regained function of my body, but I just felt that those two orbs were gonna be my children.Me: Oh! Wow!On paper? Insane. But in reality...Darla: Yeah, this was about a month before I came to visit Andy on the trip that we fell in love. So I thought, “OK, things are shifting in my life. Things are changing. A whole new energy is coming”.And then sure enough within like 8 months after we got together, I was pregnant by the end of that same year with my first son. So yeah, so the dreams definitely told me that shifts were coming and that changes were coming.But then also just the gut feeling that I had that “This is crazy, I left one husband and now I'm moving to a foreign country to be with a guy”.On paper it all sounded insane, but in my heart and in my gut I knew that this was right, this was what I'd been preparing my whole life for. I always knew that I needed to speak Spanish. I always knew that my partner, my mate, was far, far away in another country. Ever since I was a little girl, I just knew it.Me: That's really funny that you say that about the Spanish, because I was told years and years ago by a psychic that...I was learning French at the time and the psychic was like, “Well, you really need to learn Spanish” and I was like, “Really?” I was in high school, I was like 18 or something, you know? And I wound up using Spanish when I was 38! But use it I did and, you know, married a Mexican, yeah, all that stuff. So it sometimes takes quite a long time to manifest, right? But it does, it's there.What Darla does now to help othersSo talking about dreams and intuition, I think that links really well to the kind of thing that you're doing now with people. Do you want to say a little bit about that? And then, you know, where people can find you?Darla: Sure. So one of the biggest things I love helping people with, especially women but men as well, I love helping them also tap into their dreams. Even if you haven't remembered a dream in years or whatever, you can regain your dreams.And on my website which is – should I give my website address?Me: Yeah, sure!Darla: OK my website is thecopperscarab.com I've got a whole bunch of blog articles that can help you reclaim your dreams. But I also have a course that will just walk you through everything you need to know about dreams.Death work and transitionsI also help people with death work. This is kind of a new door I've got my foot in, but I really love it. I think death work is something that's present at any time of transition, and it's something that really helped me navigate divorce. It helped me navigate moving to another country, and it helped me navigate becoming a mom. Because the old 'me' had to die. Well, all three of those things. I had to shed an old version of me.And between divorce and moving to another country and becoming a mom, I think motherhood has been the hardest transition for me. Maybe because there's so much joy and love wrapped up in it as well, it's not just that I'm cutting off this part of my life and moving on. You have to keep living and interacting and loving this new life. And it's also very painful. It can be very painful and a very hard transition.Divination for everyoneSo I help women transition through big life transitions with death work, and then I'm a big fan of divination. Dreaming I think is a form of divination, but especially when you've got big decisions to make. It's really easy to get stuck in your head or stuck in your emotions and you kind of need a way to get the clarity without the emotions and without influencing it yourselves, so learning a divination tool is really helpful. Whether it's tarot, or claircognizant - inner knowing - or dreamwork, or anything like that. I think at least a form of divination is really important for everyone to know.Me: Yeah, I'd agree with that, cause I think it's just really empowering, you know? To know that you've got this tool to make really important decisions yourself, right?Darla: Exactly.Me: Yeah, that's really cool. I'll definitely put the link to your website in the shownotes as well, and I'll get into the food tips in just a moment.But first I wanted to thank you so much for being here to share your story cause I love your story and I also love what you do. So I'm gonna encourage people massively to check you out and see what you do because it's just amazing, so thank you for being here with me!Darla: Thanks for having me!Me: You're very welcome!Food and intuitionSo, I mentioned at the beginning of this episode that I'd share with you one of my favorite foods to help with your intuition in case you've got any difficult decisions to make, among other things.This food is very common and I'm sure you've eaten it already without knowing the amazing good that it's doing for your mind!The food is...almonds!Now I'm not talking roasted, salted almonds. I'm talking about fresh, raw almonds.Benefits of almondsAlmonds are a great source of vitamin E, protein and calcium, which are all nutrients that our endocrine glands absorb and which therefore can help bring us clarity of mind, focus and heightened intuition.How you use almondsHow do you use almonds? Well you can eat them raw by the handful, of course. You can sprinkle them on salads or eat them in a trail mix. But no matter how you eat them, one thing I would say is that to get maximum benefit from your almonds, it's best to soak them first for a few hours. I soak mine overnight or while I go out for the day.The reason I say to soak them is because nuts have a natural coating of enzyme inhibitors which can make them heavy to digest. The enzyme inhibitors are natural, and they're the reason you can walk through the grocery store and not a forest. They tell the nuts to wait to become a tree until they've got not just light, but water as well. So when you soak them, you're basically activating them. You're telling them that it's time to release that fabulous growth potential – which you absorb when you eat them soaked. It's kind of like eating the potential of an entire tree with each soaked nut. Pretty cool, right?Think of sprouts – it's the same principle. You're eating the potential of an entire plant in each sprout. That's why you've heard that they're so good for you.Where to find out moreAnyway, if you want some specific recipes for using almonds, I have lots in my 5-Minute recipe ebooks that I'll link to in the show notes.The link between food and intuition is actually one of my favorite topics, so I'll also link to an article of mine that goes into more detail about several foods that you can eat to help improve your intuition.And for those of you who want to read more about the science behind food and intuition, I'll link to an excerpt from the best resource that I found which comes from a book called Nutrition for Intuition, written by Doreen Virtue and Robert Reeves and published by Hay House.I'll also link to an article that has more information on other health benefits of almonds in case you find that useful, because there are a LOT of them!Have YOU got a story to share?Which brings us to the end of this week's story – and if you've got a crazy, true story to share (and you'd like to know what food could have saved the day in your situation),  I'd love to hear from you! Got a question, or a comment?Got a question, or a comment? Pop a note below in the comments, that would be awesome. You can also subscribe to the podcast to listen 'on the go' in iTunes.I hope you have an amazing day. Thank you so much for being here with me to share in my Clean Food, Dirty Stories. Bye for now!RESOURCESDarla's website: thecopperscarab.comArticle on food for intuition: https://rockingrawchef.com/increase-intuition-with-food/Excerpt from article on food and intuition from the book Nutrition for Intuition:  http://www.fourcornersmagazine.com/sedonaconsciousmag/nutrition-for-intuition-by-doreen-virtue-and-robert-reeves/Article on other benefits of almonds: https://draxe.com/almonds-nutrition/5-Minute recipe ebooks: https://rockingrawchef.com/5-minute-recipes/About Darla AntoineDarla is a soul coach who helps women navigate times of transition and dark nights of the soul utilizing what she calls the Elements of Sacred Darkness: Dreamwork, Divination and Deathwork (not as scary as it sounds). She is also the mother of two young boys and lives on a homestead in Costa Rica. By accident.

One of the biggest questions I get when I tell people about atomistic and holistic biases is whether this affects Western medicine. Well, yes. It actually does. And secretly behind the scenes for quite some time now, I've been familiarizing myself with a series of medical innovations that quite simply haven't diffused. Why? Because they don't fit within Western medicine's cultural biases. WHAT?!? Are you saying you know more about medicine than doctors?!? Who in the heck are you? Exactly. Even saying things like this sets off people's intuitions of authority. Medical doctors are brilliant. They're great. I'd far rather have a surgeon do surgery on me than me do surgery on me. However, doctors are also human. And all humans blindly copy culture from the people they're in awe of without them even realizing it. And so, the Romans blindly copied atomism from the Ancient Greeks whom they were in awe of. And then everyone else in the West blindly got atomistic biases from the West because they were in awe of them. The result is that baked into the very structure of medicine is an atomistic structure. You can see it in the way medical care is delivered. Medicine divides up the body into lots of tiny subspecialties. If you have back pain, you go to a back doctor and that doctor looks at that localized region. The problem is that the body is all interconnected. Very often, the problem with your back often originates with a lack of dorsiflexion in your foot. Those forces are then transmitted all the way up your legs and express as a back problem even though the real issue is the foot. How many unnecessary back surgeries are performed around the world? We just don't know. But we're committed to helping doctors create awareness of their cultural biases so that we can make sure that medicine's cultural blindspots don't cause it to miss out on simpler and less harmful opportunities for care. If I'd met Tony Molina straight out of college, I would have thought he was straight up nuts. My reaction would have been "WHAT?!? Are you saying you know more about medicine than doctors?!? Who in the heck are you?" I would have gotten #Triggered and blindly defended my culture. And I would not have been behaving scientifically. Science isn't about intuitions about human authority. It is about the evidence. And so, when I met Tony Molina more recently, I still thought he was kind of nuts, but through The Straight-A Conspiracy and The Bryan Callen Show, I'd seen the ways in which ideas didn't diffuse. And so, I spotted something. Here was a man who had done everything his culture had told him to do. He'd pored over the data. He'd learned what it all added up to. And he had confronted people with that data...only to be repeatedly dismissed because he didn't have the right credentials. Humans--including doctors it turns out--don't respond to facts. They respond to stories. They have to get WHY things work. They have to get WHY doctors don't get these things. And they have to be told a story where none of this is anyone's fault. We all blindly copied a culture from our parents. Now, it's time to reflect and evolve a better culture. It's time to ask simply "Why Doesn't Western Medicine Turn Us On?"

Once there was this lion who had many friends, big and small. One day the lion got trapped in a net. Help, yelled the lion. I’m coming, said the elephant and with a swing of his trunk he missed the net holding the lion and got trapped in a different net. Help, yelled both the animals and all their large friends came to help, and also got trapped in nets. Help!, they all yelled and then 1,000,000 ants, mice, rats, bees, wasps bit through the net and didn't get caught. Aesop: Many small friends can be the best of friends. Announcer: And now your host. Kelly Coughlin is a CPA and CEO of BankBosun, a management consulting firm helping bank C Level Officers navigate risk and discover reward. He is the host of the syndicated audio podcast, BankBosun.com. Kelly brings over 25 years of experience with companies like PWC, Lloyds Bank, and Merrill Lynch. On the podcast, Kelly interviews key executives in the banking ecosystem to provide bank C suite officers, risk management, technology, and investment ideas and solutions to help them navigate risks and discover reward. And now your host, Kelly Coughlin. Kelly Coughlin: Greetings. This is Kelly Coughlin, CPA and CEO of Bank Bosun, helping C-suite bank executives manage risk, regulation, and revenue creation in a sea of opportunities and threats. Today, we're going to talk about a tactic that can without any doubt generate new customers and create new revenues for a bank. But first some background. I started my business career back in 1982 at Merrill Lynch selling mortgage backed securities and municipal bonds to banks and credit unions. In those days, I kept a 3” by 5” card box of contacts filed two ways, alphabetically and chronologically by next date of contact. I would staple a new business card of a banker to the 3” by 5” card with all the contact information on the alpha card. On the chronological card I would have the name of the individual and the company and the contact history with dates I met with them, calls I made, information I sent, and the next future contact date. Looking back now, I don't see how I was able to manage that system. Very inefficient, but very effective, provided you recorded all activities and filed each card correctly. There was frequently a panic if a call came in from a contact and you had to scramble around to identify the contact in the alpha box and then locate the contact history in the chronological box. In 1986, I bought one the very first personal computers by Compaq. This is a couple of years before Windows. I think I paid about $8000. Got a long term five-year lease for it. I bought some software that had a very primitive contact management system. It was called Exsell, spelled E-X-S-E-L-L, not related to the spreadsheet software. I don't know what happened to that company, but as primitive as that software was, it changed my life. At least my life in terms of sales marketing. That one simple software reduced my contact management maintenance time by 90%. It was more effective in that there were fewer errors and now more efficient, and that I only had to maintain one record in which the contact info and the past and future contact info was maintained on that contact record. The reason I tell you that story is, in today's podcast we're going to learn about a sales and marketing tactic that will have as great an impact on how you identify new business relationships, develop those relationships, and convert those relationships to new customers. But this podcast isn't for everybody. Specifically, it's only three types of bankers interested in growing revenues. One, they are using LinkedIn now but really don't do much with it in terms of generating new clients. Number two, they are using LinkedIn now to generate new clients but spend more than 45 minutes per day on it. And three, they're not using LinkedIn now because they haven't really seen the benefits of it but would like to see the benefits. You will notice the common word in these three categories is LinkedIn. Why is LinkedIn so important? Because LinkedIn provides a platform that enables people to cost effectively connect with over 313 million members in over 200 countries and territories. No other platform allows that. Please note I did not say efficiently. I said cost effectively. In my accounting world, effectively implies accuracy and functionality, and efficiency implies time and effort, which for many of us equates to cost. Most of you use some sort of spreadsheet software. Excel is the most popular. On my first computer, I used Lotus 1-2-3. Remember the backslash you had to use before you entered anything in that program? Painful. I've been a power user of Excel for many, many years, yet I estimate I only utilize about 15% of Excel’s total functionality. The same is true with LinkedIn. In today's podcast, we're going to focus a little bit on a more effective use of some of the hidden functionality of LinkedIn, kind of like that moment when I discovered the pivot table function in Excel. That was a brilliant moment. More importantly, though, we're going to talk about a more efficient use of LinkedIn. Then you can rest assured this is not some theoretical podcast on the benefits of social media, nor is it on the benefits of advertising on LinkedIn. This is focused exclusively on using LinkedIn to identify target customers, develop a relationship with them, and convert them to new customers, all within a minimal amount of time. So, if you're in category number two, spending over 45 minutes a day on LinkedIn will show you how to reduce that to 12 minutes per day, max. If you are in category number one, only using LinkedIn to maintain your profile, we'll show you how to uncover a couple of hidden functions and use your profile to identify new customers and new revenues. If you are in category number three and aren't using LinkedIn at all but are curious about it, this might be the perfect thing for you, because one is probably kept you away from LinkedIn is you perceive it as a waste of time. For many, it is just that, a complete waste of time. I know this firsthand. I was in category number one. I used LinkedIn mainly as a way for people to find me, and somewhat, I was in category number three. I didn't use it very much. I frankly was never in category number two, spending over 45 minutes a day on it, because I never saw the value of doing that. But I'm in a whole new category now. I'm going to call it Category AAA. I spend less than 10 minutes a day and generate new contacts and new relationships every single day, and frankly love it. All because I'm a software as a service solution created by Don Brailsford, the CEO of Social Leverage Venture, Inc. It delivers revenues. It's inexpensive. In fact, I can make it cost $0 for certain banks, but that's a separate discussion. With all that said, I want to introduce Don Brailsford, the CEO of Social Leverage Ventures, Inc., located in Wilmington, North Carolina. Don, are you on the line? Don Brailsford: I am. Thanks so much Kelly. Thanks for having me. Kelly Coughlin: Thank you, Don. I hope you're having a great morning. It's Saturday morning. Why don't we start out with just a real short introduction of who you are, what you're doing? Family, that sort of thing. Give us some context of who Don Brailsford is. Don Brailsford: Sure. I've been in the financial services space and the marketing space and a serial entrepreneur basically my whole life. I've done real estate development. Grew up in Connecticut. Came out of a traditional business education. Next, I ended up teaching some classes at the University of Connecticut, but my real love is marketing. I love to talk to people. It's my life. I enjoy it, and I'm always fascinated by how hard it is to get good ideas and quality people together. The friction between getting the right person to the right idea just amazes me because it seems like we've built so many bad ways of “selling” or marketing that there's more resistance than there is acceptance. I'm 59 years old. I live in a little town just north of Wilmington of the water called Hampstead. I have a 20- and a 21-year-old son, and I've got a beautiful Catahoula. I think the most telling time in our history was when the immigrants came to America. The immigrants came in and most of them were destitute. They had nothing, but the first thing they did was they formed networks. Those are the neighborhoods. Those neighborhoods, all those people did was everything they could for each other. If someone knew where there was a good place to buy food or a good place to live or there was a job, or anything they could do. Those groups, despite having absolutely nothing, very quickly prospered, and it wasn't to the detriment of anybody. It was to the benefit of everybody. That rising tide lifted all ships. That's what great networking does. It's not, I'll do this for you Kelly if you do it for me. It's, Kelly, if I can help you in any way, let me know. I'll be looking for ways to help you, and it would be great if you did that for me too. If we both did that we got 20 other or 30 other or 40 other people to do that, we'd be unlike everybody else in the business industry, where very few people have anyone trying to help them succeed. If you can become one of those rare few who can put a team together where everybody is trying to help everybody succeed, your life becomes infinitely easier. You have fellow travelers in your journey, and it's much more enjoyable, and life becomes just much, much sweeter. I just love facilitating that for people.  Kelly Coughlin: Yeah, that's well said. You use the term immigrant networking. I use the term ecosystem. We're now all part of a similar ecosystem. We're talking to community and regional banks, and everyone participating in that ecosystem. That is our audience for this podcast, and that's the audience for Bank Bosun as well. Catahoula? Is Catahoula a boat? Or is that an animal. Don Brailsford: Catahoula is C-A-T-A-H-O-U-L-A. Catahoula is a dog. It's the oldest cur in the United States. It's actually the state dog for Louisiana. Your listeners down in the Deep South will be familiar with the dog. It's a dog bred for hunting wild boar and bear, which makes it sound ferocious, but the fact is they're incredibly sweet, amazingly fast, and beautiful, gentle animals.  Kelly Coughlin: You've used the term immigrant networking. I use the term ecosystem. So, let's stick with the term ecosystem for our purposes. When we look at an ecosystem, many organizations currently use LinkedIn as a way to connect to their ecosystem. In the subject of this podcast and my discussion with you, is a more efficient use of LinkedIn. You listened to my introduction. I talked about the primitive version of my sales and marketing experience at Merrill Lynch, where it was a 3x5 card system. This is free technology. Then, there is some CRM software that was available for nothing. At that time, nothing really enabled us to connect to a network or an ecosystem, but LinkedIn is kind of the first one to do that. How do you see most organizations use LinkedIn? I know you have a more efficient way of using LinkedIn, but before we get into that, let's describe what's the state of the state before you guys are involved with it. Don Brailsford: Honestly, LinkedIn, nine years ago the marketing that I was doing was much more conventional. I had a mail center and a call center, and we did a lot of work doing seminars. We'd set up seminars for our clients in their communities and created the idea of having online sign ups. We did online sign ups, which is a whole novel thing. Did automated phone follow ups to follow mail that we sent. We'd call up and tell people that we were writing to them about the letter that we'd sent them to and invite them. That was all kind of novel, but it was also slow and you could see the costs just spiraling out of control, and you could see this this nascent social media coming on, Facebook coming on. Back then, it was Myspace. Nine years ago, I switched. I just couldn't do the seminars anymore because I just felt like so many guys were spending so much money and it was such a huge risk for them. A lot of people showing up just because they were planning their weeks around where their free food was I looked at the different social media spaces, and LinkedIn was a few years earlier—I don't remember exactly when it was, but I joined LinkedIn because I always like to check out the new stuff. It had a couple hundred thousand people. I think it was seven or eight hundred thousand when I first got into it. I didn't pay attention for a bit, but then I started paying attention, and nine years ago, they were in the millions. They started to make sense, and I found out about the groups and things and I said, gosh, there's an opportunity. Never mind the seminar. If I put 2,000 or 3,000 people with someone, that's a lifetime supply. We started going into LinkedIn, and LinkedIn back then, everything was free because they used either the crack cocaine sales model where you give everything away until everybody is hooked and then they can't go away because they're so addicted to it. They've built an amazing, one of the most valuable databases in the world, honestly. Everybody worth knowing has dumped their information into LinkedIn and has presented themselves on LinkedIn. It's amazing that people on LinkedIn who might not ever take your phone call or an e-mail or anything from you will connect with you on LinkedIn and then you can send them a message. One of the hardest things we had to do when we started out was just convince people. They'd say, well why will they connect with me? I said, because they just do, because people are social, because we're pack animals. That's what they want. A lot of times I had to spend 30 minutes convincing people. I promise you they will. They just will. We want to be connected even if we're wealthy and important and famous. We still want to have connections. It's such a small world when you have relationships. Going back to the immigrant thing, you'd be amazed at who knows who and who meets who. If you treat people right and if they know what you have to offer and what you're trying to accomplish, and they know that you're trying to help them with theirs, reciprocity is incredibly powerful. LinkedIn as it started out was just basically they started off thinking, okay, we're going to get people jobs. Then, they quickly realized that they had this massive database of all these people. I frankly believe they can say whatever story they want, but I believe that their users created the idea that actually it's even better as a sales and marketing and partnering and affiliating and joint venturing tool than it is hiring tool. I think the biggest part is, they do more business as a result of trying to find prospects and clients than they do trying to find employees. Kelly Coughlin: How does one go from category number one, using LinkedIn mainly as a way for people to find each other, to category two and three? Especially number two which is using it as a way to more actively do business with each other? Connecting with clients that might be looking to do a business loan or looking for wealth management services or looking for trust services or looking for bank cards or services? How do they go from passive use to active use? Don Brailsford: One word, systematically. Nike said, just do it. It's right. You sit down and on a daily basis, LinkedIn gives you these great tools for searching. You can search for exactly the kind of people you want to work with. I would submit to you that unlike in the financial services of the life insurance industry where everybody is a sales person, bankers aren't viewed that way, so they have a big advantage. When their banker reaches out to connect you, you're like, sure. I'll connect with a banker, because I might need a bank. The thing I didn't get to say in the beginning, or I didn't think to say it, I'm a huge proponent of community banks. I so much prefer a local bank that understands the community and is invested in the community and cares about the community. The way that you work is you sit down and you take LinkedIn and you say, all right, we what are the people we can best help? What kind of people are we looking for? You do a search, and they have these great search tools. Basically, you pick what industries you want to work with. Who is the person in the business? Do you have specific businesses? You can target anything you want almost. Then, you just reach out and you send them a contact request and it has to be personalized. Kelly, if it was you and you were the client I wanted to reach, I'd reach out to you and I'd identify you as the CEO and I sort of manufacturing company that I would certainly love to make a loan to and get deposits and things from. I would say, hey Kelly, we're a local community bank and we always like to connect with local business leaders with the opportunity of perhaps helping each other out. We're also involved in many local events and things. Let's connect and hopefully get coffee and just get an introduction and see if there's ways we can help each other. I'd sign it, Don, and that's all I would say. Kelly Coughlin: Let's take an example. Let's say I'm a bank down in St. Petersburg, Florida. My footprint is in a 120-mile radius of St. Pete. I do a search on LinkedIn and find all businesses roughly within that radius, and then I could even refine it further by look for manufacturers or look for whatever target profile. Don Brailsford: Absolutely. The way you do it is as you would do—it's not exactly 120. So, it would do a 100-mile radius, is their biggest radius. You can always move your center, so you can move your radius around. Do 100-mile radius and then you just search what kind of business you want. It tells you what industry you want to get and you can search for particular businesses if you want if you know them, but if you don't know the business but you just know, we work well with manufacturers or we work well with service companies or we work well with professionals or doctors, attorneys and people like that, the kind of people that can bring you business. You reach out and you say, here's all the people. Again, I would submit to you that for bankers, it is a target-rich environment because they're not viewed as salespeople they have to be defended against even though there is a sales function, very definitely a sales function, in it. It's just not viewed that way. They're going to be pretty well received, and they're going to get an opportunity to at least get to the door and create a relationship and do that. You could so easily keep your marketing or your business development staff could be steadily building on a daily basis. You could have two or three new introductions and meetings and get togethers. You could have 20 or 30 people a day coming into your ecosystem where you connected to them and you can start communicating with them. Reach out to connect with them, and then on your connection message you could say, I'd love to get together and have coffee. There's two ways they can respond. They can just accept your connection request and become connected to you, which is a win because now the door is open. Or, they can respond and say, yeah Kelly, I'd love to have coffee. If they say, I'd love to have coffee, hey you're in dialogue. There you go. Now you're off where you wanted to be. If they don't respond, I would send another message to you. If I'd sent that to you and all you said was, yeah, I'll accept your connection, but you didn't respond to me, I'd send you another message a couple days later. Hey, Kelly. Thanks so much for connecting with me. I love to get together and just get an opportunity to at least buy you a coffee and hear about your business and tell you about the kinds of things we're doing in the community. Would you be available for coffee sometime next week? Then, I would wait and I would wait another week to 10 days. Ten days later I'm like, hey, Kelly. Hope you're having a great week. Just wanted to put this back on the top of your inbox. I'm sure you're very, very busy and you may not get to LinkedIn very often, but I am still very interested in getting together. Hopefully we can work that out. If you're available any time next week, please let me know one or the other. That would be great. Kelly Coughlin: Or, if they've done say a podcast, you could send a link to a podcast that say, hey we just did this podcast on estate planning and trust work, and have a listen. Tell me what you think. Don Brailsford: Absolutely. That's the great thing. It's a win when they connect. As soon as someone connects with you, you can go to their profile. You get all their information about them. Their titles. A lot of times they'll have addresses and phone numbers and Twitter handles and their websites that they use. You'll know who they know, and that's huge, because it might be that I get to you, but who I really wanted to get to is the guy that you know. The guy that you know, the guy who's the CEO of the company that I desperately want to work with because there's a huge opportunity they're going to build a big building and I want to make them a loan. I'm going to sit down with you and say, hey, Kelly. I was really impressed with your profile and the connections you've got are spectacular. You've got a great reputation in town. I see you know Bob Jones over at Dewey, Reitman, Howe. I'd love to meet with Bob. I know they're starting a big project and I'd love to chat with him about that. Would you be kind enough to make an introduction? Introductions are better than just connection requests because obviously, they're a third-person endorsement, basically. It's an opportunity to get in there. Most of the guys I work with are identified as, and are in fact, salespeople. Bankers aren't viewed that way. So, when a banker asked to be introduced to somebody, you're like, oh yeah. Nobody's afraid to introduce a banker. Again, target-rich environment. Just an unbelievable opportunity. I know the banking business is very tough, but the connections and the opportunities to get to the door and make your pitch and create the relationships are absolutely there. Kelly Coughlin: Let's back up for a moment. In the webinar when I first got introduced to you, I believe you had a five-step process that you envisioned. Don Brailsford: Yeah. You target the people you want. You do your searches. You try to niche it down as much as you can. I actually think the biggest problem banks are going to have, they'll have too many responses. You want to make sure that all your responses are as close to exactly what you want as you can get, because you could keep a business development office busy constantly. My gut feeling, because I know the reaction that bankers get, so that's what I think. You target first and then you contact. You target and then you send out your connection request. Then you connect and you nurture, and you nurture that by keep prodding it along. If they don't respond to you, just keep prodding it along, that nurturing. As you said brilliantly, establish value in the relationship. Show people that it's not just about, I don’t view you as a commission or you're not just an automatic sale. This is a relationship. I want to be helpful. How can I help you? Who can I introduce you to? Is there anything else? That, by the way, is one of the most powerful things you can do. As you build these connections, you're going to start having the ability to connect people, make some powerful connections for other people. So, it's target, contact, connect, then nurture. The nurturing is, you share information with them, you take the opportunity, you keep pushing them along towards having a meeting or invite them to a webinar, invite them to lunch and learn. Send them podcasts. Ideally, here's a podcast that covers this, whatever it is. Anything you have of value, and just show people that I'm a go giver, as they say. That's a great book by the way, Go Giver. Then, after that is, just sell. The great thing about it is, when you do it like that, they're not a transaction. They're a relationship, and that sales lead to not only more sales because they'll keep working with you, but it also leads to referrals. The referrals are automatic. They just keep coming. People want to feel good about what they did. If I refer someone to someone who can help them, it makes me feel good. I think that you're the kind of person who makes people feel good and does things that help them. I'm going to refer you actively because it benefits me. It makes me look good. It makes me feel important. It validates me as a person. That's how referrals work. They don't do it because it's good for you. Human beings don't work that way. Mother Teresa was self-centered, and I say that tongue in cheek, but the fact is she did what she did. It made her feel good. Thank God, she was an amazing person and did the most unbelievable things. Human beings act in self interest at all times, and one of those things are when we feel good about helping someone else, it's still self-centered although it's altruistic in that way. Kelly Coughlin: I wrote down five things. Identify, contact, connect, nurture, and sell. That can take an extraordinary amount of time. I did a certain amount of that every day for the entire ecosystem before I got involved with your software solution. Frankly, it was quite painful. It just takes up an inordinate amount of time. But what got me interested in your deal is you reduce that by 80%. Let's talk about that. Don Brailsford: Sure. You send me home and tell me here's 15 pieces of paper you got to fill out, and you get to make an entry over here, and don't forget to write this letter, don’t forget that spreadsheet. I'm like, oh please, shoot me now. I don't want to spend 20 minutes doing that because that's awful. That's painful. It's just too time consuming to sit down and execute. Our system does 50 initial outreaches a day. Then, it also does up to four follow ups for all of them from all the ones that have gone back a month. It's talking about literally thousands of communications over the course of a month, which just fills the pipeline. If you do that yourself, you're going to spend four hours a day. You're going to sit there for four hours a day cutting and pasting and personalizing, and cutting and pasting and personalizing so that people get something from you that doesn't look like, we're both on LinkedIn. We should connect. Don. That's not a connection request that's going to get anybody to work with you. Kelly Coughlin: Congratulations on your anniversary. I hope you have a good day. Don Brailsford: Exactly. People like a lot of things. I'm sorry. I've been in social media for nine years. I never even noticed when somebody like my stuff. To me it's like, okay. Good, I've got some likes, but I didn't chase the guy down. Hey, thanks for liking my stuff. Another thing that LinkedIn or social media experts like to say is, you should post articles. That's great. Questions under that. Talk about taking time. Oh, my God. It's really very, very simple. Honestly. It's very simple but it's very time consuming, and it requires discipline and consistency. I found in my brief history on the planet earth that I'm a lot more consistent when the machine is doing my consistency. It does a lot better job of showing up every day and never getting bored and never getting tired and executing when it's a piece of software or it's a machine and it's not me. I seem to have these problems of getting distracted, having to chase my dogs because he got out. I have a better idea. Not feeling like it that day. When you have a system where you know every day, every day out there, your work's getting done, and the sole thing that we say for the clients is the things that human beings have to do. You get to pick who you want to go after. Then, once they start communicating with you, once you get into dialogue and it's interpersonal communication which we all love, that gets handed off. All of the, keep nudging, keep nudging, keep nudging, keep nudging, keep delivering, keep nudging. That's all automated. Kelly Coughlin: Let's take the five categories. Identification first. Does your system reduce the time involved in that? Don Brailsford: We use all the same things for searching that LinkedIn does, but ours is sort of easier to do. It's just a few clicks. I wouldn't really look at it as time saving so much as setting it up. Once you set it up where you really saved a bunch of time, it's because it's not the initial figuring out how you want to go after, and that search comes up and there's 283 them. Well, now I've got to sit there and by hand put together 283 messages that say Kelly and then Bob and then Mary and then Eric and then whatever. Then, putting some information in it about them and then changing the message and putting my signature. Our system, you write the message that you want. If I'm writing to a whole bunch of manufacturing executives I'm going to say something about the manufacturing field, let's say something about our firm. We're very active in manufacturing industry locally. Heard great things about you. Love to get together and have coffee and meet and discuss ways that we might be able to assist you. Then, our system will go through and just deliver all those for you. Then, it's not just that message. It's the follow up message. When people connect with you, if they don't respond, basically you just go, okay, and you wait, and the system will send out the follow up. Hey, when we connected a couple days ago, as I mentioned we'd love to get together for coffee. Still serious about that. Would you be available sometime next week? Oh, and by the way, here's an interesting article you might like about tax breaks for manufacturing concerns that were created this year. Whatever it is. I'm making that up, obviously. Then, the third message and the fourth, all the way to an email. You sent three messages by LinkedIn, and then the last one you should send by e-mail because you do have your e-mail. Some people don't spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, and some people don't have that LinkedIn messages forwarded to their e-mail. So, try them a couple three times on LinkedIn and then you say, well, I'm just going to reach out to you on e-mail. The last message to you might have said, hey Kelly. We connected a while back. I mentioned I want to meet with you and reached out to you a couple of times and haven't heard anything. It occurred to me you might not be on LinkedIn very often. Is this a better way to communicate? What I said to you was, I'd love to get together and have coffee. I've got this, this, and this to offer. If you can let me know one way or another. I certainly don't want to waste your time, and I hope you're having a great week. At that point, you're going to get a response sometime. You can't ignore four communications. If they do, at that point, who cares? It's nice to be able to say, some will, some won't. So what? Someone's waiting. As long as you always have someone ready to go to, you don't feel like you're ready to starve. It's awful exciting to know that every day I've got this long list of people to see, and my biggest problem is I don't have enough time for all my new meetings and new opportunities, versus I don't know how I'm going to get to see that guy. I don’t have anything going on. My boss wants a report of my activities. Not real happy about that.  Kelly Coughlin: What kind of time reduction do you see users would experience? Don Brailsford: It does what would take a human being, some nights it could be four hours. Some nights, you might be able to knock it out in one or one and a half if you just put your head down and just went like a maniac. Bottom line is, on a daily basis, your responsibility is open up your inbox and see if there's anybody who responded to you, who you need to talk to, and tag them that they did that so the system knows, okay, you got this. We're done with our sequence, and that's it. Fifteen, 20 minutes to do what needs to be done versus an hour and a half to four hours is, I think, a pretty substantial time savings. I think you'd be a superstar in the banking industry with this. I really do.  Kelly Coughlin: That covers what I wanted to cover, Don. one of the things I always end with—I didn't give you a heads up on this, but this might be a little bit of a curve ball. I'll give you the choice of giving us one of your favorite quotes, or tell us one of the dumbest, stupidest things you've ever done in your business career. Don Brailsford: My favorite quote is, I've learned so much from my mistakes, I'm thinking of making a few more. Kelly Coughlin: Don, thanks again for your time, and we'll be in touch. That concludes my interview with Don Brailsford, a LinkedIn marketing guru. I have negotiated a discounted fee with Don for community banks only. He shares my commitment to helping community banks succeed, and he's offered us a great program at $97 a month with the final two months at no charge. You should know that in order to use his LinkedIn marketing application, you need to subscribe to LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator program, and that is around $75 a month. LinkedIn is free if you just want to post your own profile, but if you want to use it to really help get business, you need Navigator. If you use Navigator, you absolutely need this application. $97 a month to save two to four hours per day. That is a savings of about 60 hours per month. So, if your time is worth at least $1.60 per hour, then you need this. I use it and I love it. That's it for me. I'm Kelly Coughlin, CPA and CEO of Bank Bosun. Thank you. Announcer: We want to thank you for listening to the syndicated audio program, BankBosun.com The audio content is produced and syndicated by Seth Greene, Market Domination. Video content is produced by The Guildmaster Studio, Keenan Bobson Boyle. The voice introduction is me, Karim Kronfli. The program is hosted by Kelly Coughlin. If you like this program, please tell us. If you don’t, please tell us how we can improve it. Now, some disclaimers. Kelly is licensed with the Minnesota State Board of Accountancy as a Certified Public Accountant. The views expressed here are solely those of Kelly Coughlin and his guests in their private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of any other agent, principal, employer, employee, vendor or supplier.

My wife, Tiffany B, and I had ourselves a little wager at the Oscars. We made our picks of what we thought would win, and whoever got the most right would get to choose a film, any film, that would be watched by the both of us, and reviewed in a Flix. The film we ended up watching was Doubt, the deliberately-paced film adaptation of a stage play concerning Catholic paedophilia. Guess who won. Even though this is a 9 year old film, we're still sensitive of spoilers, so if you haven't got around to seeing this, fear not, there's still a solid, chunky 15 minutes of podcast for you. For people who have seen it, you'll forgive us if we then take our time dissecting this thought-provoking movie. Sorry, film. This is a film. If I'd have won, you can bet we'd have watched a movie.

If I'd thought about it I never would've done it I guess I would've let it slide If I'd-a paid attention to what others were thinkin' The heart inside me would've died But I was just too stubborn to ever be governed by enforced insanity Someone had to reach for the risin' star I guess it was up to me   I met somebody face to face and I had to remove my hat She's everything I need and love but I can't be swayed by that It frightens me, the awful truth of how sweet life can be But she ain't a-gonna make me move, I guess it must be up to me   Bob Dylan

Transitions are happening every moment in our lives, and it's so important to master the life transitions. Some people have negative reactions to it because there are times when things are not going as they plan or how they think it should be. Toltec wisdom teacher Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. talks about how respecting our emotions, having the confidence to make a choice, allowing yourself to change your mind, and perceiving the life moving around and within you, could help you move through transitions gracefully. Key Takeaways These transitions are all about life. Moving is always a slow process, and many critical life transitions occur during that process. Transition and growth comes from going into the uncomfortable and doing what is best for the family and learning how to play again. Going through a transition all comes down to becoming aware of ourselves, taking a step forward, making a choice, and taking the leap. In reality, when we enter a new stage, you're relying more on your ability to improvise and re-engage in a new environment, which is to be aware of where your new setting is, what the environment is like, and who the people are. Negative emotional reaction kicks in when things are not going as you plan and how you think it should be. If we learn to detach, be in of the environment, and not expect a single thing, it allows us to be better prepared for what's ahead. As we transition into new stage in life, you are the constant. It’s learning not to project or anticipate how it will be even though it's fun to come up with potential stories but not to get attached to them so that we can actually see what’s in front of us. Instead of thinking of what should be, you see what is and you get to play with that play, that’s the interesting part of life transitions. Personal journey or personal transformation could be easy if we were all robots to avoid of any emotion, and then all the transitions could be emotionless life transitions We are beings who perceive life throughout this spectrum of emotions ranging from complete joy, to complete anger, and to complete misery. Our narrators are the voice of our thoughts or voice of knowledge. Narrators are basically are thoughts or beliefs and ideas. Our narrators are there because we give them life. "Action speaks louder than words" but we use words to describe every action. The whole point of the mastery of self is taking the action and not allowing the emotions to take actions for us when your respect what those emotions are When we honor our emotions, we're no longer blinded by our emotions. When we allow life to tell the story, we can clear the narrator. Trust your own judgment and your own capacity to change your mind when it’s needed. The narrator could be the parasite which distorts everything you see and control your actions, or it could be the ally that tells the story that reflects life. The whole point of the Toltec tradition is to regain confidence in yourself to make a choice, to express to yourself, "This is what I want. This is what I don't want," and actually listen to it. The voices that are going to be the loudest are basically the voices that we give attention to. Angel training is when we learn to be the messenger and we give attention to the voices. Whoever we give our attention to, that's what's going to control how we respond, "Yes" or "No". Using patience and will in achieving something and listening to the voice that’s going to nurture it. Negative thoughts are the important aspect of the life transitions. The best way to change a negative thought is to let it finish. There are gaps between thoughts so you’re able to catch it and then, you shift your direction. Prolonging the space between thoughts is an exercise to strengthen the will and to become aware of the voices, thoughts, and narrators in our mind. When prolonging the gap, you’re no longer projecting but you are perceiving and becoming aware of life moving around and within you. It’s called The Zone. The function of the mind in the Toltec tradition is to dream, which simply means to perceive and to project. When you control that gap between thoughts, you all of a sudden control what the narrator is going to talk. To love someone unconditionally is the willingness to see them for who they are rather than a projected mask. Love is something that helps you go through the life transitions easily. The unconditional love in life transitions is the willingness to see life, to define the balance between having the confidence in yourself to make a choice and to not project what that step is going to look like but be completely aware of what that step is There's a difference between having the confidence to make a choice during the critical life transitions and changing your mind versus not having confidence in yourself and changing your mind not because you can see what's in front of you but you're afraid to make a choice.Kamala Chambers: Life transitions happen and it is a continuous process. We break up from our partner, we lose a relationship, we move homes, we get sick and have to adapt to a new way of life. Someone dies. Transitions happen and today, we're going to bring on Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. to talk about life transitions and how we can move through those transitions in a state of grace and ease and some really beautiful tips on how to make transition easy. Luis Congdon: Today's guest is Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. He's somebody that I absolutely love. He's got so much wisdom to share about life transitions. He was trained by his father Don Miguel Ruiz Sr., who wrote the book The Four Agreements and Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. has his own spin and a fantastic way to bring to life the Toltec Wisdom. So on today's interview, I'm really honored and just really grateful that Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. has come on the show to grace us with his presence and wisdom. Kamala Chambers: It is so great to have you on the show. Are you ready to launch and dive in Miguel? Don Miguel Ruiz Jr: Yes. Thank you so much. How are you? Kamala Chambers: We're doing so lovely because we're sitting here with you. Right, Luis? Luis Congdon: That's right. And we're going to be talking about life transitions, shifts, and going through this process. Right now, you're in the process of moving but in life, all of us are dealing with some sort life transitions at some point or another either the loss of somebody, the birth of a child, moving homes, and changing. How is that for you to go through these life transitions and how does the Toltec wisdom helped you to move through this space?Mastering life transitions Don Miguel Ruiz Jr: These transitions are all about life. Sometimes life transitions make you unhappy. I remember the time when I was a child when my father took me to the park one day and after playing sometime, my dad found me crying on the edge of it. He asked me why I'm crying and I said, "I was too big for the swings." I'm too big to play and I was so sad because it's something I enjoyed to do, something I loved to do and I was so carefree about it and then, it came the day where I went to the swings, I went to the park and I was too big. I couldn't fit. It was uncomfortable and I lost something and it was heartbreaking. Right now, we're transitioning and we are going through so many unique life transitions. We're making the slow process. Moving is always slow and it's a process. Moving from California to Nevada and I'm watching not just my wife’s and my transition but I'm watching my kids and it's the same concept. We lived in a home we love and enjoy but we get to the point where it no longer fits. The lifestyle and the functionality don't fit and it's time for a transition in order to adapt to a new reality. So some life transitions are intentional which make us happy. Some types of transitions are life such as when someone passes away and when someone is born. And it's so true because my younger brother is having a new baby next month so we going to have a new Ruiz member. That's one of the reasons why we're moving and it all comes down to attachment. The attachment of a dream that we thoroughly enjoyed, that we thrived in, that we made lifetime bonds. We have neighbors and friends whom we're going to be friends for the rest of our lives. We know that. Yet, there's a moment where it doesn't fit anymore and we're going to transition to a new place and we're going into the unknown. In the unknown, at certain patterns, we know will repeat themselves but still the unknown and a huge emotional part of us wants to hold on to something that makes us happy, makes us feel comfortable. Growth comes from going into the uncomfortable. -Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. Relearning and if something happens when we're transitioning, we think we can't do this again. For instance, someone who goes through a breakup had first thought "I'm never going to love again. How am I going to fall in love again? I will never have a relationship like that." And then, you found out the next relationship is even bigger and better than the last one because you found a relationship that fit who you are as an individual. Going through life transitions all comes down to becoming aware of ourselves, taking a step forward, making a choice, and taking the leap. – Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. Some would say, "Take the risk" but it's really not a risk. It's just simply, "Take the step to the new stage in life," whether it's the death of someone we love, the birth of someone we're going to love, or just simply letting go of a dream where you saw your kids grow up the next last 6 years. They're going through a dream where they're not going to be the kids. They're going to be teenagers and what their teenage years are going to be is life transitions. A person going through life transitions is like the serpent that sheds it skin and because he loves the skin so much, he carries with him wherever he goes all the skins he's left behind and it's just a huge mess. But in order to survive, he let go of it all and engaged in the new environment. Kamala Chambers: Something I really love about what you said is learning how to play again and once we move into a new space when we go through different life transitions, it's almost like we have to find who we are again in that new space, in that new situation, in that new relationship, and in that new home. I love that you brought play into it. Do you have any practices, exercises, or tips on how to bring more of that delight into the new experience? Don Miguel Ruiz Jr: I remember a joke that Woody Allen said. It is, "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans." Funny enough my grandma used to say the same thing. Today was my daughter’s first day of school. It is one of important life transitions in a child’s life. She's going to school even though we're transitioning. Here she was planning how her day is going to be, planning her clothes, and what she's going to say. She has all these things prepared and then, she shows up, and everything she thought of wasn't really going to apply because the environment changed everything enough that her whole routine just changed and she has to improvise.Self-efficacy in life transitions In reality, when we enter a new stage, you're relying more on your ability to improvise and re-engage in a new environment, which is to be aware of where your new setting is, what the environment is like, who the people are. The willingness to see again instead of projecting on to life what you want to see and expecting that's what you're going to see. That’s where everything falls apart during some life transitions. Negative emotional reaction kicks in because it's not going as you plan, as you think it should be, and people are not behaving the way you think they are. You're already going in to scenario with a preset of ideas and beliefs that to some degree we're attached too. But, if we learn to detach, be willing to be in the environment, and not to expect a single thing allows us to be better prepared for what's ahead because the constant is oneself. So the one thing that you can expect to see is you. You are the constant in every room you're in and in every cycle you're in. Even as our transitions into new stage in life, you are the constant. So if there's a practice in applying towards life transitions, it’s learning not to project or anticipate how it will be even though it's fun to come up with potential stories but not to get attached to them so that we can actually see what’s in front of us. And it's true, not just with a new environment but within ourselves.Surviving life transitions So the practice simply means to take in a breath. Allow yourself to take that breath and focus all your attention there and realize that is the beginning point. When you open your eyes you're starting a new transition. You're starting a new stage in life. What do you see? What do you hear? What are you engaging? From there, inspiration comes in, because instead of thinking of what should be, you see what is and you get to play with that play. Luis Congdon: This really reminds me a lot of your last book where you talked about how you are watching a soccer game and the narrators were telling you about the athlete, what he was up to and what was going on in his life transitions. They're giving you a play by play not just of the game but they're also informing you of who it is and shaping your opinions of what's happening. Then, you talked about watching that game on mute. Don Miguel Ruiz Jr: Yeah, the narrators. Luis Congdon: That's a big process to stop that narrator. I don't know about you Kamala but, sometimes I really struggle turning that narrator off. I have a lot of opinions about what's happening, who someone is, and that narrator sometimes gets in the way without knowing the life transitions. Kamala Chambers: Yeah, the stories that we tell ourselves and I think it's kind of where most humans are built to create stories about what each moment is bringing, what people are bringing, who people are, even stories about ourselves. I think that could really get in the way in a time of life transitions and I love the way you've reframed it for us here. What is something else that you feel a stumbling block for people going through life transitions?Emotional development and life transitions Don Miguel Ruiz Jr: I'm going to combine that question with the commentators or the narrators because there’s the emotional factor. Personal journey or personal transformation could be easy if we were all robots to avoid of any emotion. If we allowed simply logic to reign in our bodies, then we wouldn't need self-help. It's easy to transition but we are emotional beings. We are beings who perceive life throughout this spectrum of emotions ranging from complete joy to complete anger, to complete misery. And, we go through all those stages. We get to that and experience that. The emotions are real during all life transitions. What has been true to them may not be and that's where the combination of the narrators kicks in because our narrators are the voice of our thoughts. My father would have called, "Voice of knowledge". The narrators are basically are thoughts or beliefs and ideas that tell stories about the unique life transitions. The thing about a narrator, which simply a word to describe that voice of thought, that tree of thought that happens in our mind, is the same energy I use to move my leg and to move my arm. It's the same energy I use to create a thought and at the root of every belief I have there is a yes, giving it life. There's nothing in my belief system that I say, "No" to. Thus, our narrators are there because we give them life as our life transitions. So we're telling the story. We love to tell stories. We love to put into words what we perceive whatever happens during the life transitions. Like the expression, "Action speaks louder than words" but we use words to describe every action. We describe actions with our words and those words have an emotional charge. We can paint a scary painting, a scary story, or the most illuminating, hilarious, wonderful experience. It can be shifted immediately. We can paint the moving to transition as this and they're going to love again or I'm never going to experience happiness again. I'm never going to make friends the way I had them here. When you paint that picture with that narrator, then the unknown, which is the future, looks grim, dreary, and terrible. But if you'll see it from the point of view of joy or happiness, it’s going to be happy and it’s going to be great. But when you respect that emotions are real and respect what our emotions are, you find that they have great benefit and when that happens, you're no longer allowing the emotions to take actions for us. We take the action during emotional life transitions. That's the whole point of the mastery of self. We become aware that I control my,"Yes" and I control my, "No," I control the energy that controls and animates this body and this mind during life transitions from doubt to self-confidence. But, in honoring our emotions, which is I think the clouds are perception when we move or a transition that blinds us and what feels are narrator’s story. When we honor our emotions, we're no longer blinded by our emotions which is one of the key to handle life transitions. We get to see what's in front of us and that’s very important because in front of us, are multibillion opportunities, an infinity of possibilities. For example in my case, the move to Reno could be disastrous or it could be the most wonderful experience there is because we're moving to be near my brother, his wife, and new baby Julius. We rebuild our dream around family. The kids have a place to run around near Lake Taho. This completes the story and of course, things that can go wrong, but that's going to be truth if we stay in Rockland or not. It's about who is telling the story. Am I allowing to tell the story? Am I allowing my emotions to tell the story as life transitions? Or am I allowing life to tell the story? And when we allow life to tell the story, then we can clear the narrator because when life tells the story, you realize that it's a dance. A dance between the choices I make in life and the consequence that life gives back. It's a beautiful balance which helps us to find peace during life transitions. For example, we just made three offers and we changed our mind on the first two because we realize we like the house and that felt good.Self belief during life transitions To able to trust your own judgement and to trust your own capacity to change your mind when it's needed because you also realize that's not going to reflect my reality and not because I'm being fickle or being wishy washy, it's because I'm realizing that the consequence of that choice may not reflect the consequences I want to experience in life. And then, allowing myself to change my mind to respect myself, to have a voice, allows me to finally find that one place where I said, "You know what? I like it. I want it" and you know it's the correct one when you make the choice and it feels good and there's no doubt behind it. That's how you clear the narrator. The narrator can either be the parasite during critical life transitions, which basically distorts everything I see, controls my actions and my judgement of myself, controls me through this image of like, "No, you have to fall through it because you got to do this, you got to do that" or you have the narrator be the ally. The ally is the one that tells the story that reflects life as is as opposed to a narrator that describes life as an illusion. To me, the whole point of the Toltec tradition is to regain confidence in yourself to make a choice, to express to yourself, "This is what I want. This is what I don't want," and actually listen to it. Luis Congdon: Not too long ago, I was talking to a client and we were talking about some of the things happening in this person's life and what was going on as his life transitions. As I listened, I could hear the narrator and how the narrator wasn't really supporting this person and supporting their journey. I started to play around with just the thoughts around what was happening with the client and at some point during our conversation the client said, "You know, I'm noticing I can actually decide which voice I want to listen to," and they were just astounded by this idea that the voice happening in your head was just a commentator and that you could comment right back and actually start having a conversation. They could have a choice and that could totally shift their experience. That to me is something you're talking about and it's a very powerful place to get to during the important life transitions. I know that sometimes, I don't always have the wits about me to be in that space to notice that. I know that Don Miguel Ruiz Sr., your father had a heart attack. He was in a coma and was out for a while. To me, that's a transition to have this moment where you realize, "I could die at any time. I'm not invincible and I'm might not always be around," and there was a decision he made while he was out. I’m curious, what's that been like for you? Has he changed a lot? What's that experience to watch him go through this transition?   Don Miguel Ruiz Jr: Yeah, the man that came back from the coma was not the same man that went into it. The reason why is because life puts these obstacles in front you and it's the time where you realize you could walk to walk and as fast as you can talk to talk. The doctors told him to spend the rest of his days in a sofa resting and my dad said, "No. I'm going to live." The man climbed the top of the Pyramid of the Sun with 15% heart capacity. He came back of his coma. He was with a heart that's only 15% capable of functioning. His body was full of pain and he was given a very delicate balance of medications. People would give him all this talk and give him homeopathic this, homeopathic that, medicine here, medicine that. Anything they really would introduce would actually kill him, because you never know how his body reacts. That's the thing about medicine. There's a fine balance. Angel training during life transitions Learning how to live with that balance was very interesting to watch my father do and yet, not allowing pain to stop him from living was an even bigger thing. Like you were describing, watching your clients becoming aware that he can pay attention to the narrators and he can choose. That's what we called "Angel Training." It's actually very advance work for us because it is the moment where you become aware of that I am not the voice inside of my own mind but at the same I am. Sometimes life transitions very interestingly. For example, if I'm the voice that's talking to my own mind, who's listening? I am. I am listening. If I'm the one who's listening, who's talking? I am. I am not this body, I am also not this mind but I am the energy that animates both and my mind is this infinite possibility because I can dream and perceive in so many directions. The voices that are going to be the loudest  during our life transitions are basically the voices that we give attention to. What I mean by voices is, "Thoughts". They are the thoughts in our minds because we're constantly interacting within ourselves. We're the individual dream. So what we call, "Angel training" is learning to be the messenger and basically giving attention to the voices or also known as thoughts or beliefs in our mind that we want to give attention to. Because whoever we give our attention to, that's what's going to control how we respond, "Yes" or "No." I become aware that I control my will. And that's something I wished with my father during his life transitions. When he decides to take a step to climb the Pyramid of the Sun, even with that much pain, he adapted. He didn't run it the way he used too. He figured out a way that allowed him to do it, which is to do it slowly, take a few steps, sit down, have the patience. Also, it was an exercise in patience rather than strength because that's what we're used to. If we're so used to achieving something with this one instrument and we think we can't do it in any other way except for this instrument. In this case, it’s force or strength that helps you out in handling life transitions. To build up the strength of the heart, to build up the strength of the body to go up to the pyramid but also if you don't have those tools, if you don't have the heart and you don't have the muscle, then what you got? What's in front of you? Patience and will. So now, you learn how to use that instrument, patience and will. You're going to listen to the voice that's going to nurture it. From that point of view, the voice that's going to speak the loudest is the one that's going to help you in the environment you are in. That's choosing which one to control, which voice, which narrator is going to help us. That's what we know as the ally. And for that, I am aware of what I give my attention to, aka what I give my power to, which belief I give a power to in surviving major life transitions. There's an image that my brother has that I love to use and apparently it's not just my brother but it's everywhere. There's a story of an old, Native American talking to his young grandson how you can manage your life transitions using your willpower. The grandfather tells the son,"There are two wolves inside of you. One is good and the other is compassion. The other one is evil and it's anger and lack of compassion, and they both exist within you." The grandson said "If I'd make them fight, which one will win?" And the grandfather will say, "The one you feed." Whichever one of these beliefs, knowledge, ideas, voices, or narrator, be it fear or anger or love or compassion, the one that's the strongest is the one that we give attention to. So, with that in mind, the change in my father after his heart attack, even after his heart transplant, was the faith in himself and who's he going to give attention to, the voice of fear, the voice of doubt, or the voice of patience and the voice of resilience. Two of them will help him, two won’t. One will feed the fear and the other will feed his ability to accomplish what he wants. From that point of view, we go back to the previous question. How to silence the mind as our life transitions through various stages? How to take out those filters? It is to become aware that the filters don't control you. You control the filters. You control what goes on in our mind. For example, my dad gave me this technique. If you find you're having a negative thought in your mind and is making you miserable in the way you know that makes you miserable by the way you feel. The best way to change it is to let the thought finish. When the thought finish, redirect your attention. You see, there are gaps between thoughts. There's a gap between the first thought and when you finish the thought, our thought begins. There is silence between the two thoughts. When you become aware of that gap, you slowly focus first your attention on how your thoughts end. When you become aware on how to catch it, you shift your direction. You shift your attention to go on a different direction.Be it the sound of your breath, or sound of music. You're able to prolong the space between thoughts, which means you are able to prolong silence. And it's an exercise in the strengthening of the will to make the most of our life transitions. But it's also this exercise of becoming aware of the voices in our own mind, the thoughts, or the narrators. So, when we become aware of that gap. The game my father always wanted to play is to teach us how to prolong that gap because what happens in that gap is that you're no longer projecting, you are perceiving. That's what I've come to learn. You begin to perceive what's around you.  That's what the gap is. It's the silence of life that's allowing you to perceive it. Because when we have a thought, we're projecting. Once again, the function of the mind in the Toltec tradition is to dream, which simply means to perceive and to project as our life transitions. Projection is the thoughts. Projections are the least that we have. That we're saying at the beginning of show about transitions, we're projecting into the unknown. A possible story that we want to have and we may be happy and may be sad but the moment we stop projecting is when we learn to perceive, listen, see and, be in the moment. It's what they call, "The zone". It’s when you become aware of life moving not only around you but within you. I've found my father more in that space and me, growing up, being in that space was difficult because there are a lot of consequences to my father being there. There are a lot of consequences and decisions and the insurance and bills and all kind of thing that had to be paid because to have a heart attack and being in a coma is a very expensive thing. It costs a lot of money and the wrong choice can have a stronger ramifications. So you have to be aware of what choices you make and how you do it, why you do it. My father usually calls this, "Being in the eye of the hurricane". Letting the hurricane go around you but you stay in the center. And what I've become aware of is to stay in the center and find that gap in between thoughts and even then, going back to how we perceive those voices and narrator which you listen to.Controlling the gap, and honoring the emotions during life transitions When you control that gap between thoughts, you all of a sudden control what the narrator is going to talk that eases life transitions. It becomes a lot easier because it's like giving someone permission to talk in your presence. All of a sudden, you realized, it's been you. You've been giving that narrator permission to talk, to control, and to drive all that time. That's where honoring the emotion comes in. Once again, we honor this is how we feel. We feel that sadness, we feel that anger, and we feel that thing. For example, yesterday, I made an offer on the house and I watched the emotional reaction on all four of us, my wife, myself, my daughter, and my son. And I realized, as I pay attention to that, I could have let the narrator on my head continuously say, "No, no, no. This is this house. This is the house," and force myself to do something that may not be the right thing. If I listened to it and change my point of view and see what does this one do, then all of a sudden, one voice got happy. My daughter got happy but my wife didn't get happy. Her narrators were going off. Then we made a choice and then, I resented the offer. After talking, I'm realizing this one made my daughter happy, this one made my wife happy, this one made my son happy. Now, this one is going to make me happy if I just change my perception on this one little thing that I didn't like about it. Now that I changed it, I'm like "Hey, wait a minute. That does work. All right, fine. I'm saying yes to it" and also, all four of us are saying, "Yes". That's the gap you need to fill in carefully during the life transitions. Kamala Chambers: What a beautiful experience for you all to arrive at the same place. I think that's kind of a trick that I find is important for me as my life transitions. That practices like looking at choices and decisions and transitions from a holistic experience. There are always different aspects of ourselves inside and for me, it's about getting all of those pieces playing together. All of the different aspects that are in alignment so I'll feel that ultimate joy and you're doing it with your entire family, which is such a big move and such a beautiful place to get to. Don Miguel Ruiz Jr: Yeah, it's a thing that reflects my love for them. To love someone unconditionally is the willingness to see them for who they are rather than a projected mask as our life transitions. If you pay attention to what we were talking on the show, it's all about the projected mask. Sometimes, we're so attached to that projection that we are forcing life to fit that projection but, sometimes life doesn't fit that projection. When you make it fit, it’s like trying to put up you through a cylinder hole which is not going to work. Even though you may try it, you might draw all the force and you might actually break it because you're trying to make it fit during the life transitions. It’s not going to work. The way to do it is to be patient. Now, the unconditional love is the willingness to see life, to define the balance between having the confidence in yourself to make a choice, which is to take that step into the transition and be confident in yourself to not project what that step is going to look like but be completely aware of what that step is. Because, in being flexible way to decision, in changing your mind and going "This is what I want". The difference between having the confidence to make a choice and changing your mind versus not having confidence in yourself and changing your mind is not because you can see what's in front of you but you're afraid to make a choice. There's a huge difference in the two. It looks dramatically different. One is to not have confidence in your choice thus, you're allowing the elements around you to control you choices. In this case, family, a realtor, or a family friend, and they make the choices for you. But if you have confidence in yourself and you listen to the realtor, the friend, and the family, you're going to find the one step that satisfies all and that's the one that works because it satisfies yourself too. Luis Congdon: And what I like about what you're saying too is that there is space for all the voices to be heard and listened too and then, bringing it all back to where we started of listening to the emotions and voices in your head and making a decision and bringing everybody into play. Don, it's been a real honor to have you on the show today. Really loved everything you've said. Thank you so much and blessings to your move and I'm excited for you. Don Miguel Ruiz Jr: Thank so much Luis. I really appreciate the opportunity. Kamala, thank you for having me on your show. Read MORE - Click HERE   MUST HAVE RESOURCES The One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard The Richest Man in All of Babylon by George S. Clason  Want to make a big impact and have a thriving business? - Launch a Podcast Guide 

I've always tried to keep my personal and professional life separate, but these days it seems the lines are increasingly blurred. It's no secret that much to my amazement and delight I've become a father again which accounts for my recent sabbatical from the radio. So, whilst I was reconciled to the idea of parenthood returning to the agenda despite my (ahem) advancing years, I never anticipated..... twins!!!! A double blessing for sure, but that's easily said by those who've never actually experienced the reality of dealing with two wee ones simultaneously! It's relentless, they sleep deprivation is a form of torture but mainly I'm just delirious, doolally and drunk on the delights of nappy changing, cooing, comforting and generally easing the passage of my identical twin boys into this world. Funnily enough when we eventually arrived home with the boys there was a record shaped package amongst the piles of bills and junk mail which turned out to be my copy of Malcolm Cecil's "Radiance". I've long been fascinated by Cecil's career, as an obsessive devourer of record sleeve credits I eventually pieced together Cecil puzzle from his work alongside Robert Magaloueff with Stevie Wonder, and their pioneering electronic ambient excursions as Tonto's Expanding Head Band, to his production with Gil Scott-Heron And The Isley Brothers, but his solo album from 1981 had so far eluded me. It's very much in the classic T.O.N.T.O style, The Original New Timbral Orchestra being the vast modular synthesiser on which the album is entirely played, (apart from a contribution from Paul Horn's flute on the second track we include in the show). So "Radiance" ended up being the soundtrack to our first days at home with Quincy and Sebastian.... and you know who the former is named after! Ambient music certainly seems the most appropriate for the frayed and dazed days of new parenthood, gentle and slightly surreal, time dissolved into a continuum of caring and getting through. So maybe instead of my musings about cycling to South London my podcast will become a blog about twin parenthood? Actually I look forward to the day when I can get back to cycling and broadcasting live, and for that matter the days when I can return to my regular work-outs in the pool... of all the things I miss at the moment swimming would have to be top of the list as I tend to think it keeps me sane as much as trim! Anyway it was fairly miraculous to me that I managed to record a show here at Forge Towers, and I wouldn't pretend it's the greatest radio show I've put together, but under the circumstances I'm pleased with the outcome. There's a healthy balance of ancient and modern, with new soulful sounds from Lucas Arruda, Eric Roberson, Dele Sosimi, Kamasi Washington nestling alongside classics from Doug and Jean Carn, Charles Earland, Deodato and others. Of course Doug and Jean's rendering of Wayne Shorter's beautiful "Infant Eyes" was an obvious choice even if it was originally dedicated to a baby girl, it has all the tenderness and wonder of life inside the baby bubble. Of course for all the vagaries of sleepless nights and other sacrifices the joys of witnessing a new life are so much greater, unfathomable, therapeutic and profound. As for the music, well it was definitely therapeutic to get back to my vinyl, and the one advantage of recording the show at home is that affords the opportunity for more spontanaeity. Certainly the last half hour was completely impromptu, other than kicking it off with Nick the Record's rework of a Lincoln Olivetti Brazil boogie nugget, the rest were just pulled out off the cuff. (Which is easy as my twelves are all in the racks behind my decks, whereas the jazz is mainly on the other side of the room!). If I'd been planning a show more meticulously I'd probably thought "better" of playing Level 42's "Starchild" and Deodato's "Whistle Bump", so there you go. I also particularly enjoyed the start of the show with the Malcolm Cecil segué into an often overlooked version of "My Favourite Things" ( thank you Jean Claude Thompson). As I mentioned on the show I've been reassessing my Charles Earland collection as he is undoubtedly my favourite jazz organist, so expect more buried treasure from the king of the Hammond in weeks to come...Generally to my ears nothing screams "Acid Jazz" more than the sound of a funky organ groove, as that was the dominant sound at the birth of that "genre". So it was to my surprise that when I eventually dipped into the the third disc of the Kamasi Washington album to find that "Cherokee" was very much in that kind of rare groove style. However it must be said that the thing that stands out to me about the vocal tunes on The Epic is that they have something of a "show tune" quality, the melodies are almost archaic on "Cherokee" and "The Rhythm Changes", which is no bad thing. Of all the new music I played this week, I have to say that having vinyl copies of the Dele Sosimi and Lucas Arruda albums has increased my appreciation of those works exponentially. Of course I'm a vinyl fan, but beyond any discussion about sound quality, what makes an enormous difference to me is that I'm less likely to listen to a file on my main sound system and even though I run my laptop through a nice pair of speakers (in the kitchen), the whole sonic perspective is very different when playing off vinyl on my "semi-audiophile" set-up with my decks. So the Dele Sosimi album which benefits from being recorded in one of London's best analogue studios sounded much mightier from vinyl. As for Lucas Arruda's "Solar", it's a delightful set which owes much to classic Brazilian crossover fusion and soul, and even though it bears his influence quite obviously even Ed Motta is a fan, as indeed am I; a maturing talent for sure. More musings on fatherhood and music (definitely not) for dad dancing next week. I'm toying with the idea of some specials.... Like shows dedicated to my favourite drummers... Bernard Purdie, Harvey Mason et al, and I think a classic strictly acoustic jazz set is long overdue... Also I'm trying to think of a fitting tribute to my late great colleague Colin Faver who passed away last Saturday after I recorded the show. The man was one of the greatest DJs I've known, so much greater a talent than so many more celebrated names...no doubt he'll be rocking that party on the other side. Until then as one of my favourite comedians, Dave Allen, used to say "may your God go with you" which i think leaves plenty of room for interpretation whether your religious, agnostic or atheist...your God might well be music. 1. Malcolm Cecil - Sun Song 2. Oliver Nelson - My Favourite Things 3. Lucas Arruda - Vento Sul 4. The Foreign Exchange - Milk And Honey 5. Dele Sosimi - E Go Better 6. Kamasi Washington - Cherokee 7. Charles Wright & The Watts 103rd Street Band - What Can You Bring Me? 8. Charles Earland - Charles 3rd 9. Guilherme Vergueiro - Em Cima Da Hora 10. George Cables - Quiet Fire 11.Malcolm Cecil - Gamelonian Dawn 12. Doug & Jean Carn - Infant Eyes 13. Lucas Arruda - Uma Onda 14. Omar - Get Away 15. Eric Roberson ft. King - Just Imagine 16. Famks - Labirinto (Nick The Record rework ) 17. Carly Simon - Tranquilo (Melt My Heart) 18. Airto - The Road Is Hard ( But We're Going To Make It ) 19. Level 42 -Starchild 20. Deodato - Whistle Bump

Face Front, True Believer! The world renowned San Diego Comic-Con International held its 2014 gathering this past weekend, and our vociferous speakers Diabolu Frank and Illegal Machine have graciously spent a half an hour discussing the scintillating revelations of this momentous occasion in a bonus second episode of the week for the comic book faithful, totally free of charge to you! Now you can't complain that you have nothing to do while standing in line during the Thursday "midnight" debut showing of the most magnificent motion picture in film history, Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxt! How's that for service, effendi?00:30 Star Wars returns to Marvel Comics. Whoopee.03:13 Ant-Man urge to watch... drooping.05:30 The Vision & Avengers: Age of Ultron.06:05 Angela: Asgard's Assassin.07:10 Captain America & the Mighty Avengers. And by "Mighty" they mean "Black." And anyway, we mostly just talk about this lady...09:31 Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Agent Carter.11:19 Batman v Superman * Wonder Woman. If I'd heard about Gal Gadot's Facebook post, this would have run longer. This bleeds into DC Comics on TV talk, including Arrow, The Flash and Constantine. Of the lot, found this the most exciting...21:02 Joaquin Phoenix in Doctor Strange and Marvel's race gap26:53 How about that Mad Max: Fury Road trailer, eh?Jeez, we went a whole episode without Mister Fixit? That would be the first time that's happened since we recorded our first session on June 27, 2014...

If I'd have won the lottery, then I'd have bought more than new windows

This is our first attempt at a stunt podcast, live from a festival.  We go to festivals and I am trying to figure out how much work I can make for myself without taking the fun out of the festival for myself, or just generally trying too hard. I didn't really set up any interviews this time around - no, not even Billy Bragg - but I did manage to grab Mark from emerging Glasgow band The Seventeenth Century for a chat.  The audio is terrible, I'm afraid, but it should be just about audible.  If I'd been able to locate the keys for the Toad van at that point we'd have gone in there, just for a respite from the wind noises on the recording and the colossal amount of bleed from the main stage. In any case, it should be entertaining enough, I hope, and with a bit of luck subsequent attempts at the same thing will be a lot better. Toadcast #79 - The Wickerman 01. The Cave Singers - Beach House (04.04) 02. Julian Plenti - The Fun That We Had (07.31) 03. The Second Hand Marching Band - Mad Sense (15.37) 04. The Seventeenth Century - Mid October (22.59) 05. Celebrity Chimp - Pornstar (35.37) 06. The Lemonheads - The Outdoor Type (40.00) 07. The Human League - All I Ever Wanted (47.11) 08. The Go Team! - Feelgood by Numbers (50.25) 09. Meursault - Lament For a Teenage Millionaire (59.16)

If I'd where first I'd go away. But I was not the first on the skate, I just was last, and being ten on one single board is a bit much if you want to make some spin.

If I'd where first I'd go away. But I was not the first on the skate, I just was last, and being ten on one single board is a bit much if you want to make some spin.